


Hear the Harmony Only When It's Harming Me

by objectlesson



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Brief Mentions of Gore and Torture, Dirty Talk, F/F, Femslash, First Time, Healing, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Nothing Explicit but it IS a post-war fic, Post-Canon, Post-War, Power Dynamics, Psychological Trauma, Recovery, Recreational Drinking, Romance, Slow Burn, bdsm undertones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-21 07:32:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16572335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: Before the war, Draco was so certain of her looks, her breeding, knew exactly how to dress to accentuate her curves without ever looking cheap or tawdry. Now, her body feels strange and extra, like something that she’s forced to carry around with her, a lump of scar tissue that only fires a nerve impulse if it’s brushing knees with Harriet Potter over tea and stolen scones.---Or, Harriet and Draco finding themselves (and each other) after the war.





	Hear the Harmony Only When It's Harming Me

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've read Harry Potter fic literally since fandominaton.net was still around, which, for those of you who remember, was a long ass time ago. That being said, I read exclusively femslash and never really fell into the Drarry hole, even though I've always loved their dynamic in the books and was half-aware of it as a popular pairing.
> 
> But then, a few months ago I read Carry On by Rainbow Rowell and loved it so much I finally GOT why people shipped Harry and Draco, and decided to combine it with my old love of HP femslash, and here I am! Falling headlong back into the HP fandom after YEARS of liminal appreciation. I rewatched all the movies and reread the first book just to re-familiarize myself with the canon and also with their dynamic, but I will admit I'm a little rusty in places! I WAS OBSESSED with the series when it came out and could beat any living soul at trivia but I'm old now so there might be some bits that are less than perfect, but I really hope you all still read and enjoy. I am planning on writing more and absolutely am falling in love with falling in love with this series again, so if this gets enough of a positive response it might be a track I head down and awhile since I've been considering taking a bit of a break from 1D. 
> 
> Thanks endlessly to my friend Sheena for reading and encouraging, Blake for being SO into this foray, and ALWAYS to my beta Jen, who doesn't even care for Harry Potter OR lesbians as much as I do and still dove headfirst into the to brit pick and edit for me like she always does. A true trooper and amazing friend. I love you!
> 
> Title from the Mitski song Geyser, which is a perfect encapsulation of every fucked up thing I like about Drarry.

\---

Draco figures out that she’s gay the same year she figures out why she’s so terribly obsessed with hating Potter. 

The realizations are, unfortunately, related. 

It’s been a sticking point of personal frustration for her since she first saw Potter in Diagon Alley four years ago, her hair thick and disheveled, eyes wide-wild, as if the colour of shock itself was green, and instead of immediately making fun of her or turning up her nose as she normally would at such shameless un-put-togethered-ness, Draco _started a conversation._ Wanted, in spite of herself and her dignity, to be closer, to know more, however absurd and impractical such a thing was. And _that_ was before she even realized it was _Harriet Potter_ , a moment when she thought she was just a bony, dark-skinned eleven-year-old, stunned to be in even the most mundane of magic places, scar hidden under unkempt curls.

Potter has never acted how a proper hero ought to act, and Draco knows this as someone who has studied her in detail, poked and prodded her until she cracks. She spends her first several years at Hogwarts believing that the reason she lies awake at night, plotting new ways to make Potter flush and explode and lunge at her so fiercely that Granger and Weasley have to physically hold her back lest she actually make _contact_ with Draco’s _skin,_ is because she _hates_ her. Hates how infuriatingly humble she pretends to be, how revoltingly _good_ she supposedly is, when Draco _knows_ that all it takes is some well-timed digs at her nearest and dearest, or perhaps an orphan joke or a comment about how flat-chested she is, to send her into a spiraling rage. Everyone thinks Harriet Potter is so special, but Draco knows that behind the legend, behind the myth, there’s just a girl who is (or should be) mediocre in every way, apart from the whole “saving the wizarding world as an infant” bit. 

Potter has ashy elbows and no _real_ natural talent or predisposition for any particular sort of magic; she’s nice to her friends, maybe, but she is and always has been an absolute cunt to Draco and _her_ friends, ever since that first meeting during their robe fittings when she acted like she was better than Draco simply for having been nearly killed by You Know Who or whatever. She snubbed Draco even more spectacularly weeks later on the Hogwarts Express, and nice girls or fantasy heroines or whatever she fancies herself as being just don’t _do_ that. Draco doesn’t understand why no one else can see through Potter’s ruse of celebrity to the boring girl underneath: average marks, a face that’s neither ugly nor pretty, poor friends, an awful temper. Harriet Potter is _not special_ , and Draco dedicates much of her time to publicly proving this to anyone who’ll listen. 

It’s a fixation, she knows this, but when you loathe a girl, you’re allowed to think about her all the time, allowed to wonder how flat she _really is_ under her robes, if she has dark, puffy nipples sitting there on her sternum like a boy, waiting to be tweaked and pinched, or if maybe there’s a tender swelling of budding pubescent flesh that would make her yelp if Draco were to jab it with her finger. 

She spends three whole years thinking that all her energy and effort is simply the side effect of her paralyzing _hatred_ of Harriet Potter. Particularly in the shower or in bed, Draco’s prime plotting locations. She’s not even tipped off by the way that her body gets hot while she schemes, skin feeling too tight, itchy, tingly, like just imagining the act of humiliating Potter carries a sort of profound, physical satisfaction. 

It’s not until the summer before her fourth year at Hogwarts that it all becomes horrifyingly clear to her, what’s been going on probably this entire time. 

Draco is staying at the Malfoy villa in Bath with some cousins she hardly knows, and on a night when they all get a little too drunk on the firewhiskey they stole from the cellar downstairs, they decide to snog each other “for practice.” Except Draco, who has been choosing not to press on the fact that she has yet to regard her male suitors with anything other than an apathetic sort of disgust, who realizes quite suddenly that this is not practice, not for her. This is real. This is the way she wants to kiss forevermore. Not drunk and with her cousin, necessarily, but with _girls._ It hits her hard, the softness of it, the filthy-goodness, all the things she knows that she’s supposed to feel with boys but never has, hot and shaky and like she wants more, like she’s stepping off a precipice into her future, where things make sense, and marriage and sex and all that stuff actually seem _appealing_ instead of vaguely terrifying and definitely boring. 

Draco aggressively self-examines too much to trick herself out of a full-blown epiphany, though apparently not enough to know the reason why she fantasizes about Harriet Potter’s nipples isn't because she _hates_ her. Or _just_ because she hates her. 

For a minute, Draco just hates herself. For fancying Potter in the first place, yes, but also for not realizing it until now. For surrounding herself with suck-uppy idiots like Crabbe and Goyle, who go along with whatever she says because they’re half in love with her and would never question her motives or ask her why the fuck she makes them accompany her around the castle to spy on Potter, why she’s short of breath every time she manages to needle a reaction out of her with one of her carefully designed insults that she passes off as nonchalant even though she’s spent days crafting them to sting. She’s no better than _they_ are, stumbling stupidly over her. She’s been stumbling stupidly over Potter, and _no one even bothered to tell her._

_—-_

Professor Snape loves to put them together during Potions, if only because it provides him with the opportunity to subtly goad Potter by praising Draco and thus manipulate her into doing something worthy of docking Gryffindor points. Up until now, Draco has found the whole ritual hilarious, but realizing that she both fancies and hates Harriet complicates her relationship to the joke. She feels stroppy and vulnerable, _exposed_ now that she knows her motivations to barb into Potter’s side until she turns into the angry, blustering mess that Draco lives to see no longer mean that she's been inarguably in power all this time. It’s different, now that she’s _aware_ of why she gets hot and dry-mouthed and delighted every time she drives Potter to throw punches. Why she wants their fights to escalate into something physical. It’s so _dull,_ though, now that she knows. So undignified, to imagine herself throwing rocks at a dragon until it gets mad and lights her on fire, only because she’s fucking freezing, and she knows she’ll never get the warmth she wants any other way. 

She’s coming to terms with the fact that at least _part_ of her desire to see Harriet Potter react is because she hates her _own_ mortifying reaction to being rejected four years ago. Harriet hates her, purely and simply, with no hidden motivations, no secret hunger, no moral complexity. Harriet hates her because to rigid-thinking, paternalistic jocks like Potter, with her black-and-white morality and nonsense hero complex, Draco and her whole family are _bad._ Evil. There’s no hope for reconciliation or even a hot hate-snog session with someone like Harriet. She’s too…simple. 

For example, if Potter apologized for being an absolute twat for four years and disrespecting Draco every chance she got and asked to be friends, Draco would positively jump at the chance. (Meaning, she’d say she needed time to think about it and push Harriet to complete a number of low-level demonstrations of humiliation to prove this wasn't some dumb trick before she accepted the offer of friendship and then went about trying to seduce her.)

But if Draco did the same? _Even_ if she was somehow able to pull off sincerity, Potter would never accept it. She’d be disgusted by the mere thought and sneer, _I’d rather wrestle the great squid than befriend the likes of you, Malfoy!_ with her cheeks all red and her eyes flashing spectacularly and the whole of her trembling as she spit out her surname like it was a curse. 

In short, Draco’s never going to get any of the things that she’s secretly wanted from Potter all this time, and as much as she hates to admit it even to herself, it shakes her a bit. Makes her wonder how skewed their power dynamic really is, loathe herself for how pitiful it is to want not only someone she cannot have but someone like Harriet Potter, the most moralistic, self-righteous twat Draco has ever met. The only coping mechanism she has left for the terrible shame brought about by such a predicament is overcompensation. 

Partnered up as per usual, Potter chops gillyweed while shooting narrow-eyed glances in Draco’s direction as she very, very slowly grinds dragon toenail clippings with a mortar and pestle. It’s the short end of the stick in terms of ingredient preparation tasks, she knows this, but she’s going to make it look cool because that’s how she’ll survive: feigned nonchalance, conditioned apathy, and performed boredom in the face of Potter’s obnoxious Gryffindor blundering. Sure, she got saddled with the toenails, but at least she’s not going to break a sweat over it, she’s just going to get the finest powder with the least amount of effort possible while Potter positively _massacres_ the gillyweed with the force of her resentful chopping. Draco flips her long, sleek ponytail from one shoulder to the other, not bothering to look up as she drawls, “Perhaps you should lean away from the cauldron a bit. Your hair always puffs up when the steam gets in it. It’s annoying...obscures my vision. They have smoothing serums for that, you know.” 

“Shut it, Malfoy,” Potter grits out, chopping even more violently. In addition to the noticeable discrepancy in their breast size, _hair_ is another one of Potter’s sore spots that Draco loves to pick at. Draco prides herself on being impeccably put together, robes always clean and unwrinkled, hair always combed and so shiny that it almost glints silver in the low, green-tinted flames of the dungeon. She’s pale and sharp-featured, and everything about her appearance speaks to her breeding, lineage, and purity, so she dedicates the time and energy to make sure it stays that way. 

Harriet, on the other hand, has the most infuriatingly unruly hair, thick and black, kinky curls always sticking up in at least ten places. Draco obsesses over it, always has, and although there are a million other things about Harriet’s appearance she could latch onto and make fun of, her hair, forever unkempt, is the feature that they’re both most stubbornly fixated on. Draco thinks about pulling it, about smoothing it down, about casting charms to make it attractive to birds so they’ll nest in it and give her a good laugh while she watches Potter try and bat them away. Potter always gets haughty and sensitive about her hair, more so than if Draco insults her awful posture or rumpled clothes.. Draco _thought_ teasing Harriet was about Harriet, but she's realizing, much to her dismay, that it might have been more about _her._ What she likes to look at on Harriet, the deep-seated and long-buried foundations of their ritualized rivalry. 

As Draco grinds away, she tries to think of things she can attack Harriet for that _aren’t_ rooted in her own desires and obsessions, and she struggles to come up with _anything._ Her chest, her hair…she notices them all because she spends too much time _looking._ Even her _clothes_ aren't safe. Harriet must crumple her robes strategically every morning before she puts them on, there’s no other explanation for how perpetually rumpled they look. _And she has money!_ Loads of it, the robes are _technically_ very expensive, good taste, even, she just has no clue how to wear them. _Or_ she intentionally wears them like a muggle’s Hallowe’en costume or something. Draco is infuriated by it, but now, as she presses on it a bit, she can see through that fury to the uglier urge that drives it: she wants to make a fist in those wrinkled robes and tug Potter in by them fiercely, if only to smooth them out. Even _that_ has probably always been coloured by her strangled _hunger_ for Potter. It drivers her mad that she can’t even go about needling her in Potions class like she normally would without being forced to look in a terrible mirror. 

Snape sweeps by, robes stirring up dust on the dungeon floor as he leans over their cauldron, where the liquid ingredients are only just beginning to simmer. “What have we here?” he asks coldly, peering down at Potter’s white-knuckled grip on the knife she’s inexpertly wielding. 

“Potter’s attempting to sabotage our potion by positively _mangling_ the ingredients before adding them,” Draco drawls, eyes rolling up to meet and hold Snape’s so that she doesn't feel tempted to watch Potter start twitching and darkening or whatever else she might do in response to so transparent a provocation. If Draco can’t tease her directly, she’ll employ anything at her disposal. 

“I’m...I...I wasn’t!” Potter stammers, because that’s how she _talks_ when she’s been effectively gouged in just the right way, words tumbling out of her with loads of space and air between them, cheeks flushing in such a way that she looks guilty, even if she’s not. Draco has always been so _good_ at knowing exactly where to push and strike to get that reaction, why did she never _interrogate_ her desire to be the one who knows what sets Harriet off best? Her stomach tightens, but she just smirks and flips her ponytail, glad that she's spent so long cultivating unbreakable masks. 

“Well, well,” Snape purrs, shooting a nearly imperceptible smile to Draco before adding, “in that case, ten points from Gryffindor. And if your potion turns out less than _perfect,_ I’ll know why, and only _your_ marks will suffer, Ms. Potter.” 

He sidles off, and usually this moment feels like triumph for Draco. She has Harriet red and blustering and furious, right where she wants her, squirming and shooting daggers at Draco’s cool exterior with those green, green eyes. 

But she looks so _lovely,_ too, and Draco notices it now. Her throat tightens up, her gut drops and rolls over as she looks at her, and something about it all makes it substantially less satisfying than it used to be. She frowns and turns back to the mortar and pestle. 

—-

She waits for it to go away. All of it. 

You Know Who is back, and the climate at Hogwarts is horribly dreary in the aftermath. Dreary soon turns to dangerous, and Draco’s in over her head before she even realizes how badly she should scramble out. She can’t, though, not without her arm stinging and her airway getting cut off and Lucius screaming at her with his grey eyes so steely and cold that they almost look inhuman. So she stays on the side she’s on (without anyone having _asked_ her if she’d like to be here, thank you very much) and begins to wonder for the first time in her life if it’s the _wrong_ side. And that rigidity, that black-and-white view, makes her think of Harriet Potter, and she gets angry all over again. 

_Go away,_ she thinks, stomach coiled tight and hot. _All of it._

Most horrifying of all, the more Draco resolves to lean into her hate, the more complicated and run through with filaments of other, less savoury things it is. She desperately wants to abandon her long-running infatuation with Potter, to _simply_ and purely despise her, rather than despise her at the _same time_ she wants to throw her against a wall, sink her own slender hands wrist-deep in those thick, black curls, and pull. Rather than despise her at the same time she feels cold, uncontrollable pangs of fear when she thinks of what it must have felt like in the graveyard with Cedric Diggory that night. Under the passion of her combined lust and hatred, there are more insidious things growing, too. 

A genuine fear for Harriet’s safety as things become darker. A repeated wish that no _real_ harm befalls her. An ugly sort of jealousy that rears its head when she finds out that Cho Chang and Harriet are some sort of pathetic item, even in spite of everything that happened last year. A mortifying hope that even as Draco sides with Umbridge to take down Dumbledore’s Army, that something _will_ change, that Harriet Potter _will_ sweep in like the self-important hero she is and brilliantly save the day again. Save Draco from having to live as her family expects her to, save her from the terrible, sickening ache she’s beginning to feel deep in her arm, where the dark mark is burnt in a latticework of white scar tissue. She wishes so badly that she could simply hate Harriet, that she believed deeply and wholly in the path she’s hurtling down out of terror and obligation, but at this point, she’d settle for just hating her _and_ wanting to fuck her. 

Because the reality is that Draco believes in her. Imagines--in her most pitiful moments, when she sits under the shower spay with a curtain of white-blonde hair dripping down her shoulders, crying over the things she must but feels she cannot do--that if there _is_ a bright future after all this, Potter might be the one to turn it all around. That maybe, if she were the brave sort, the simple sort, the impassioned sort who knows right from wrong and doesn't get mired down in the sickly grey area in between, she could stand by her side at the end of it. 

It’s a weakness, though, and she always chastises herself when she gets scared enough to think it. After the shower, she’ll sit in front of the antique mirror in the Slytherin common room and comb her hair while everyone avoids looking at her, too afraid to mention her red-rimmed eyes, the weight she’s lost. Over and over again, she’ll her bone and pearl-handled brush through, leaving the nearly translucent strands long and lank on either side of her pale face, blinking at her own reflection and telling it, _go away, all of it. I’ll just wait for it to go away._

But it remains. You Know Who is back, and she's expected to call him the Dark Lord now. Her life is changing, pulling her further and further away from Hogwarts, from Harriet Potter. But at the center of her storm, she still thinks about her before she falls into fitful sleep. Hating her, wanting her. And maybe sort of loving her, too. 

_—-_

In the year following the war, Draco cannot _stand_ being at the manor, but she has nowhere else to go. 

There are things to be taken care of, affairs to put in order. Blood to clean up. Shed snake-skins to dispose of so that Draco never has to look at them again and think about the horrible, human intelligence and cruelty she saw in Nagini’s eyes every time she was forced to bring her meals, knees bruised and heart in her throat as she cowered in front of the Dark Lord. The vestiges of horrible magic clinging to the walls like sticky spider webs to clear. Her father, who has gone quite mad, to take to and from his trial at the Ministry, as he certainly cannot be trusted on a broom or in the floo by himself. Her mother is in no state to do it, but it needs to be done, and Draco has always been very good at compartmentalizing her feelings to the point where she forgets she has them at all. So, out she goes, into the world, where she imagines most things have been burnt to the ground, London in a crumbling ash. 

Surprisingly, London feels relatively unchanged. It’s odd, when Draco’s entire life is in shambles. 

Narcissa pretends that Lucius isn’t ill, that he’s _sleeping_ or _resting_ in his study, but Draco knows he’s actually just sitting in his embroidered armchair, staring at the wall and muttering, eyes wide and unblinking, hair unwashed. Before the Dark Lord came back, her father was the single most powerful influence in her life. The reason why she believed what she believed about muggle-born wizards and pureblood families, the reason why she agreed to kill Dumbledore, why she crawled further and further away from herself and down a darkening path. Now, seeing him reduced to gibberish and unwiped drool and a twitching, clouded gaze, she hates herself for ever letting an old man get the best of her. 

She cuts off all her hair, the feature her father always loved best, the thing they had in common, that made them look anything alike. She stands in his study while she does it, right in front of his staring but unseeing eyes, her nose dripping as she hacks fistfuls of downy white-blonde. The strands drift to the floor around her feet, adhering to the remnants of still-sticky blood that seems to be in every room, even the ones she doesn't remember anyone being tortured in. It was just on the bottom of their boots, dripping from their hands, clotting the incandescent white of her hair in red. And she wants it gone. The memories, which will never fade, the blood, which _will_ but only with a lot of work, and her hair, which feels like the only thing she can take care of right now. So she does. 

Wiping her face with the back of her hand, she steps out of the circle of clumped blonde hair and leaves it on the bloodstained floor of Lucius’s study for Narcissa to find and likely weep over. 

—-

Draco vomits often, sleeps little, and mechanically goes through her days manually scrubbing blood like a muggle because she has no wand and the thought of magic makes her sick right now. She doesn’t trust herself, but she also feels as if she needs to be punished for her deeds, and she can’t die just yet, so the second best (worst) option is cleaning with muggle bleach and muggle rags, on all fours, tears leaking out into the soapy, blood-pink water. It’s the most awful and demeaning fate, but it’s what she deserves, so she spends a year doing it, hands cracked and dry if she forgets to rub them in cooking oil after the fact. 

It takes a year for things to die down and straighten up enough to where she’s not terrified of being attacked or murdered in the streets by the rightfully angry families of still-missing muggle-born wizards. They don't know what happened behind the walls of the manor, but they know she was there, that Voldemort is dead, which leaves her as one of the only remaining targets worth tracking down and killing in grief-blind vengeance. She wants to die but not like that. Not publicly, misunderstood, assumed to be like her father, like Bellatrix. _I hated him, I was terrified of him, I was sixteen, I was told that everyone I love would be gutted if I didn’t do his bidding. What would you have done? What would any of you have done?_

This thought always, horribly, makes her think of Harriet Potter. 

Because she _knows_ that the average person might have bent and caved and let something evil stay in their house and use their basement as a torture chamber, but Potter never would. Potter, one of the only _truly_ good witches that Draco has ever met. She likes to think that she’s forgotten Potter, let the idea of her go completely because if she hates herself for what she’s done, then Potter must want to strangle her with her bare hands, but the unfortunate truth is that she wonders what she's doing, follows _The Daily Prophet_ headlines when she can about how Potter’s out gallivanting with Aurors and saving the world again. She stares at her moving picture, runs her dry finger with the picked nail bed over it, her messy black curls, her disheveled robes, and everything comes bubbling back into her throat. The disgust, the yearning, the tragic, idle wish to be given the chance to prove to Harriet that she _knows_ how horrible she was. When she sees Harriet in the _Prophet_ , she dreams fruitlessly and unrealistically of penance, of forgiveness. It almost feels like hope, and it’s a break from the pervasive, nauseating emptiness, so she doesn’t even chase it away much. 

Draco cuts her hair every time it starts to grow past her chin, stares at herscars in the mirror, and prays that no man will ever look at her ever again, will ever think that she’s beautiful, will ever force her to commit unforgivable acts because she’s too weak and terrified to say no. She makes these resolutions and repeats them as she scrubs, dizzy with the chemical stench of bleach, wondering for the millionth time how life is worth living for muggles, how they do _anything_ without magic. And for the first time in her life, she feels pity rather than disgust. 

—-

With so many relatives and entire bloodlines dead, Draco comes into the possession of several inheritances, more money than she knows what to do with, but it’s dirty money, bloody money. She doesn't want it, so she does the only thing she can think to do and gives it to McGonagall for the restoration of Hogwarts, which was very nearly destroyed in the war. 

It was her fault, at least in part, so paying for the damages doesn’t feel like charity, only the logical next step. McGonagall gets tearful with gratitude, though, and begins sending Draco regular owls inquiring if she might be interested in coming back for her eighth year once the castle is livable again. 

It’s a weird, sickening thought, going back in time like that, pretending like what happened was some kind of mistake and she can just _do over_ the year she lost being tortured and terrified in her own home. At the same time, it’s oddly appealing. She reads the letter over and over again, and the longer she spends fantasizing about Hogwarts, the more feasible of an option it sounds. She can’t stay _here_ , anyway. She’ll go mad like her father if she stays in the manor, but she can’t go anywhere _else,_ she still feels like too much of a target. Or, rather, she’s too deeply ashamed to be seen even if she isn’t. But Hogwarts…Hogwarts is safe, familiar. She could test the waters regarding public perception of the former Death Eaters, she could see if any of her old friends are attending, if Pansy or Blaise would be willing to speak to her at all. 

The night that her father tries to hang himself with an old necktie and she has to cut him down while he sputters, she sends an owl back to McGonagall. Then, with trembling hands filmy with oil, she packs her trunk. 

—-

Seeing Harriet Potter sitting in the Great Hall reading _The Daily Prophet_ is like seeing a ghost. Or, perhaps, like being spotted and realizing that _she_ is a ghost, that she’s been dead this whole time. 

She stands there, blinking, and as if the massive surge of unwanted feeling that she’s battling is a physical thing, Potter looks up, blinks at her from behind the smudged lenses of her glasses, and blanches. Clearly, neither of them thought the other would attend this pseudo eighth year, and for good reason. Draco assumed Potter would be rounding up Death Eaters with the Aurors, leading some glamourous hero’s fight, or _at least_ that she wouldn't want to revisit the site of the final battle, where so many of her friends died. And Potter probably thought Draco wouldn’t ever show her face again, let alone _here,_ in the Great Hall, the site of so many of their petty squabbles. They regard each other, and Draco imagines striding up to her, cupping her angled face between her own palms, and kissing her. Pouring the whole of her soul into it, _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I am so fucking happy that you’re alive, I’m sorry I had any part in this, I’m sorry I was terrible to you for five years when, really, all I wanted was to know the taste of your breath. I’m so sorry._

She can’t actually move, though, boots rooted to the floor, and it’s Harriet who gathers her things and approaches her. Draco braces herself to be hit. “You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here,” is what she says, voice trembling a bit in a way that makes her want to choke. 

“Something like that,” Potter replies, voice cold and flat. She doesn't look angry, up close, mostly she just looks tired. There are puffy bags under her eyes, and her skin looks wind-chapped; her hair is longer, too, down to her shoulders and hanging in unbrushed, lackluster curls, like it’s grown out of its usual style and she hasn’t bothered to trim it or charm it back to its usual length. Draco can’t stop staring at her, can’t stop longing to throw her arms around her neck and pull her close and squeeze her, feel her bones under her palms. She _knew_ Harriet Potter survived the vanquishing of Voldemort, but a full year of seeing someone’s face only in the _Prophet_ and the backs of your eyelids when you lie awake to avoid your nightmares makes them feel like a legend, like an idea. She didn't even realize it, but she’d sort of felt like Harriet _did_ die, but here she is. Exhausted and war-battered and beautiful and _breathing._ Draco can’t remember why she was so afraid of loving her, back when she was a teenager. It all seems so pointless now, the terror made small and insignificant by all the _real_ terrors she’s faced since.

“I wanted to come back to Hogwarts,” she says eventually, and she thinks of adding something true but not honest, like, _I paid to have it fixed, and I need to see how my investment played out_ , but she doesn't want to do thatanymore, doesn't want to be that girl. She reaches for her ponytail to tug out of habit and realizes that it’s no longer there, that she has long since cut off her hair, that every defense mechanism or tic she had around Harriet has been taken from her or rendered useless. Here she is, left bare. “I wanted to come back to Hogwarts to have a final year here, since I mucked up the last one…for me and for everyone else. I know I can’t make up for or change anything I did,” she announces, shouldering her bookbag, eyes darting to the floor because she can’t take the inscrutability of Harriet’s cutting green eyes. “And I’m not trying to...but for what it’s worth, Potter, I have no intention of treating you with anything other than civility and respect. I understand, however, if the feeling is not mutual.” 

Harriet actually snorts in laughter, and Draco’s cheeks colour. She wishes she could rub the sudden heat away, but instead she shifts her weight uncomfortably, squirming as Harriet regards her with equal parts amusement and skepticism. “That wasn't the speech I expected from you,” she admits, rubbing her full, chapped lips with the back of her hand. “And, uh, civility and respect? You would have tried to kill me if you’d seen me last year!” 

“And you would have tried to kill me, too, but you would have succeeded, whereas I wouldn’t have. Because as annoying as you are, Potter, I don’t…I, well, I’ve never wanted you dead,” she explains, supposing that there’s no point in trying to _lie_ her way out of this when she’s not afraid, not anymore. Not of Potter knowing, not of her own shame, not of her own feelings, she has witnessed _far_ worse than her own humiliation at this point. There are worse things, and they've happened in her parlor. “So,” she says brightly, offering her hand for Potter to shake. “I know friends is a lot to ask...how about not-enemies?” 

Potter regards her hand for a long, long time, examining it for anything unsavoury before slowly taking it in her own. It feels so electric, so good, this palm-to-palm contact, and Draco’s stomach lurches at the strangeness of it. “Not-enemies, then,” Potter agrees, mouth twisting into a hesitant smile. “I suppose we both have enough of those. Enemies, I mean.” 

Draco just nods, her throat too thick to get anything out of. 

—-

It’s surreal, being back, because it’s both oddly the same and incomparably different. Hogwarts looks the same, smells the same, and the mostly repaired damage doesn’t really hurt the mystique, but something about it _feels_ fundamentally changed, like the pain from the battle seeped into the walls themselves, and the stone is now scarred, carrying the screams like bruises. McGonagall is doing her best as headmistress, but there are so many large-scale changes happening to the fiber of the school that most of the time it seems like she’s going through the motions, holding it together, making things up as she goes along. For example, there’s a broad range of experiences for the eighth-year students who _did_ decide to come back. Some of them act like it’s any other year, so they’re just attending classes, taking tests, studying in the library, discussing future plans. Pretending like nothing happened, like they’re not back solely to buy themselves some time in the post-war landscape, to relive their childhoods because they’re frightened by the world outside of it. 

Others, Draco included, are simply there to be there. The teachers don’t seem to expect her or _any_ of the year-eights to take their studies seriously, and she realizes after a week or so that she can sleep in, she can stay in the Great Hall after breakfast and eat scones and read novels so she doesn't have to think about the next hour, the next day, the next year. She walks the halls and patches up little bits of the castle that she can sense are holding onto dark magic, still so compelled to _clean,_ to do whatever little she has power over, even though she was never much good at healing charms, and the new wand she picked off a Death Eater’s corpse in the manor doesn't quite work for her. 

It’s on one of her meandering trips around the castle during class time that she runs into Harriet Potter, who also seems to be having a walkabout for no reason, no place to go, just wandering to wander, to feel the stone under her shoes. They stop and stare at each other again, and when neither of them says something immediately, they both launch into talking, and Draco doesn’t hear what Harriet says, but she _thinks_ it might have just been, _Hello,_ which is so foreign and friendly that she can’t trust her ears. “Sorry,” she mumbles, dropping her eyes. “Skipping class, too, then?”

Harriet shrugs. “Is it really skipping? They’re not _for_ us, exactly, I mean, the teachers don’t care. Don’t know what to do with us, it’s not like we’re taking our N.E.W.T.S. since they’ve been waived, and I just…dunno. Everyone stares at me,” she ends on, eyes getting dark. “More than usual.” 

It hits Draco hard, the raw honesty of it, the way that Harriet is just so _plainly_ saying such a thing out loud and to _her,_ of all people. Who she has no reason to trust. “Erm,” she rasps, picking at her nails, which are chewed down to nothing. “At me, too. Probably for different reasons, but still.” 

Again, unexpected laughter. “I guess I’m sort of here to say goodbye, in a way, to have a normal year with no impending doom. And it’s hard when the rest of the student body doesn’t really…see me. Or something.” 

Draco’s mouth is dry when she asks, “Why are you talking to me like this? Don't you wish…I don’t know...that I was dead? Or at least not here, so you could have that normal year in peace?” Her voice wavers at the end, gets a little desperate, and Harriet just shrugs again, like she couldn’t care less. 

“I don't know, it’s not Hogwarts without my school rival at my throat, is it?” she jokes, and when Draco’s mouth flattens out miserably, she adds, “I don’t actually hate you, even if I should.” 

Draco feels sick, her stomach tightening up around the familiar helpless feeling that Harriet is too _good,_ that she doesn’t even deserve to stand in the same room breathing the same stale corridor air when she has done so many terrible things, and Harriet Potter _forgives_ her for them on some level. This used to make her angry, but right now it just feels impossibly heavy and sad to think about. “I don’t hate you, either,” she says. _Never have, not like you think, anyway. “_ But you don’t have to feel obligated to talk to me.” 

Harriet crosses her bony arms over her chest, jumper baggy and so long that it nearly covers the rumpled gingham skirt she’s wearing over tights. It’s a muggle schoolgirl outfit with robes over it, an amalgamation of everything Draco should despise, but all she wants is to take Harriet’s hands and fold the overlong sleeves of her jumper back, roll them up a bit so that she's not dragging them in her quill ink. There are things she feels that no one else notices or does for Harriet, not even her friends who take care of her as well as anyone can. There are just too many loose ends to tie, and no one with the time or energy or interest to tie them all up, except Draco. She could make so many knots for Harriet Potter. 

Harriet takes a deep breath, startling Draco out of her thoughts as she says, “I don’t…s’not an obligation, Malfoy. Can’t really describe it, but the best I can come up with is that, in some ways, you’re one of the only people who _knows,_ like, really knows, how bad it got. What Voldemort is like. And I guess…that’s a comfort? It’s better than getting stared at, anyway...better than the whispers, you know?”

Draco does. She knows in her bones, dark and deep. She cards a sweaty palm through her cropped hair and offers, “Well, then. Would you like to eat with me tonight?” 

Harriet snorts, and Draco thinks she might have gone too far, too fast, but then she hears, “Yeah, sure...why not?” 

_Because I helped a psychopathic wizard try to kill you and your friends and family,_ Draco thinks, but she doesn’t say anything like that, she just nods curtly and tries not to get her hopes up. Still, after Harriet passes by, she continues down the corridor with her heart pounding in her throat and a smile on her face for the first time in what feels like years. 

—-

Shockingly, Potter follows through. They sit in odd, stilted silence in the Great Hall at the Gryffindor table before too many people stare, and they end up packing their plates and leaving hurriedly, eyes cast to the floor. “You can come to my common room,” Draco says, cheeks burning and eyes narrowed, the whole of her body betraying her pathetic longing for this to turn into a real friendship instead of a strange, tentative olive branch between two scarred hands. 

“I won’t catch fire? You guys don't have _wards_ or something?” Harriet asks, grinning wryly. She’s holding a plate of puds, and one very nearly tumbles off before she catches and levitates it right into her mouth in a messy bite. Draco watches, fixated. 

“I can _lower_ them,” she snaps, wondering if she can with her wand not working as it should. “You should be fine if I invite you.” 

“Let’s hope,” Harriet smirks through bulging cheeks. It’s at once gross and charming. “By the way,” she adds after swallowing, “I’m aware of how weird this is. We don't have to pretend like it’s _not_ weird.”

“I’m not _pretending,_ Potter,” she grinds out, making it to the common room entrance and sliding her hand down the cool dungeon wall before whispering the password. She gestures for Harriet to follow, tentatively laying a hand on her arm as they cross the threshold, both of them hesitating a bit. Nothing happens, thankfully, and as soon as the wall rematerializes behind them, Potter shakes her hand off. 

“Welcome to the common room,” Draco announces, collapsing onto a black leather couch that squeaks under her weight. Harriet sits tentatively on the other side, kicking her shoes off and drawing her feet under her before tearing a roll in half. Draco likes that she’s making herself comfortable, that she’s not even attempting to be polite. It lightens the awkward atmosphere a bit. 

“I’ve actually been here with you before,” Harriet muses, regarding Draco curiously from behind her glasses. “Perhaps you don't remember…was a long time ago, second year. Ron and I Polyjuiced ourselves to sneak in because we were _convinced_ you were the heir of Slytherin.” 

Draco’s stomach drops, coiling tight and hot because she _does_ remember, of _course_ , she remembers, can viscerally recall how outraged and invaded and tricked and humiliated she felt when she’d realized that Crabbe and Goyle weren’t actually themselves, but Potter and Weasley instead. She spent weeks plotting ways to get back at them, inventing horrible spells that she could never use to turn their faces inside out or break both their femurs. She remembers replaying everything she said over and over again, desperately wondering if she’d said anything stupid to Potter. It all seems so obvious, now. “Merlin, you were so wretched,” she giggles a bit, delirious with how odd this is as she finger-combs her pixie cut, staring at her food so that she doesn’t stare at Potter. Potter, who doesn’t hate her, Potter, who is reminiscing about their school days with a healthy remove as if they were decades ago, Potter, who is systematically annihilating everything on her plate as if she hasn't eaten in days. It’s amazing, how much she can eat, given how skinny she is, those long, coltish legs bent under her, runs in her tights. 

“Perhaps, but so were you... _you_ were the wretched one, you _wanted_ to be the heir, even if you weren’t, and the heir was killing muggle-borns,” she reminds her, eyes hardening as she chews. “Don’t pretend like we were just kids, playing. We were already well on our way to the war.” 

Draco frowns and sets her plate on the table, untouched. “I know,” she says, quietly. “You weren’t wretched, you were brave. And I was an absolute bitch, brainwashed by my father, and...well. I know it doesn’t mean much, probably, to you, but I have a lot of regrets. And genuinely believing pure-blood wizards are better than muggle-borns is one of them. That shit is absolute bollocks.” 

Harriet looks surprised, eyes wide behind her glasses. “Sort of wish I’d recorded that, somehow. Ron and Hermione won't believe me...they'd be convinced you were lying to manipulate me in some grand scheme.” 

A lick of anger heats Draco up from the inside, and she sounds defensive when she insists, “Well, I’m _not,”_ but Potter doesn’t press on it, just nods and turns back to her food. The silence stretches on too long, so finally she asks, “About Granger and Weasley, why aren’t they here? I’d’ve thought you three would love to have one last hurrah as heroes or whatever.” 

She expects Harriet to narrow her eyes and snap, but she doesn’t. She’s hardly getting worked up over anything at all, none of Draco’s usual goading getting so much as a twitch out of her, and she wonders if she's lost her touch, or if Potter’s just grown up so much in the last few years that she can't be bothered by her teasing. Draco would normally be very irritated by this, but she’s grown, too. She always thought her obsession with Harriet was wrapped up in her incredible reactions to things, but shockingly, she's finding that she still feels as drawn to her as ever, even _without_ the looming possibility that her prodding will result in explosion. “They’re working at the Aurors’ office. I wanted to, had plans to not come back, but everyone decided it was best if I, erm, took a bit of time off before diving back in. The dark arts, the sort of blows I took, mentally…they sort of, they just don't go _away_. I need to get my head back on straight, I guess, and here is the only place I know how to do it.” 

Draco nods. Hogwarts was _her_ home away from home, but she always had the manor, too, had a family who supported her and paid for her whims even when they were disappointed or fighting. But Harriet has never had anything like that, so Hogwarts is her _only_ stability. It makes perfect sense that she would come back, and Draco feels an empathetic surge of relief on Harriet’s behalf, just thinking about a year off, a safe space to heal. “I can't be…I can’t go back to the manor,” she admits, eyes fixed on her own knees where they’re pressed together in grey wool leggings beneath her robes. “I just can’t do it, not after everything that happened. So, here I am, too...I cleaned up, there, but I still feel so fucking dirty. I sent McGonagall some money to repair the castle, but at the time, I didn’t even _realize_ I was doing it so I had somewhere to go.”

“You paid for the repairs?” Harriet asks, cocking her head and narrowing her eyes at Draco like she doesn’t believe her. 

“Yes,” she replies tersely, suddenly uncomfortable because she doesn't want Potter to think that she’s gloating. “I came into a lot of money after the war. If you know…er, if you know of any ways that I could help families, or muggle-borns, or, I don't know, even _muggles…,”_ she trails off, cheeks hot because she feels _awful,_ like all of her guilt and self-hatred are here, leaking out in front of the person who least deserves to be touched by such filth. The person who managed to resist all temptation, the hero of heroes, the Girl Who Lived, not once, but twice. 

“There are hospital bills…families in St. Mungos, families who lost their homes, burned by Death Eaters. Arthur Weasley is accepting funding for a course that he’s developing for Hogwarts on muggle rights and history...it’ll be taught next year, if he can afford it. You’d probably have to donate anonymously, though, because I know for a fact that he’d never take charity from you,” her voice is hard, eyes harder, bottle-green and stinging as they cut into Draco, daring her to say anything less than flattering about muggle studies or the Weasleys. Draco fights her impulse to remind Harriet that she's _trying,_ she’s _unlearning,_ that it’ll take time, but she’s here for it as best as she can be. She dreams of penance, of forgiveness. 

Instead, she swallows thickly and spits out, “Fine, it’s his...whoever needs it can have it, I don’t want Death Eater money,” as she rubs the remnants of the dark mark with sweaty palms. She wants to drop the subject, but Harriet is silent, and she can’t stand it, so she blurts, “How do you know that I’m not, like, fundamentally evil or something? Even _I_ don't know that about myself, and here’s _Harriet Potter_ , discussing the finer points of my redemption arc without throwing up the puds she just stuffed in her face.” 

“Malfoy,” Harriet sighs, settling back into the leather, closing her eyes and letting her head tilt back. Draco admires the cut of her jaw, lets her gaze linger while she can. “You aren’t evil, you’re just a spoiled, sheltered brat who’s only just realizing how fucked up your whole life and everything you once believed in actually is. You're way too conflicted about it to be evil. Plus, I _know_ evil. I’ve seen it, had it inside my body, fought it. And that’s not you.” 

Draco’s eyes well up, and she furiously wipes at them, wishing her hair was long enough to hide behind and retreating behind her scarf instead because she can’t let Potter see her cry. 

“You’ve seen real evil, too,” Harriet reminds her, using the crust of some bread to sop up the oil and sauce that’s left on her plate. “Are you like him?” 

Draco sniffles, hating everything about this. “No,” she whispers fiercely, looking at the ceiling resolutely and wishing fervently that Potter wasn't _examining_ her so closely, probably committing the watery red of her eyes to memory so she could tell Granger and Weasley about it in a letter and they could all have a good laugh about it. “I’m not like him. Or my father.” 

“I know,” Harriet tells her, awkwardly reaching over and handing Draco a handkerchief in Gryffindor colours. She angrily blows her nose into the cheery red-gold. “But it doesn’t matter if I know...it’s whether _you_ know.” 

“Thank you, perhaps you should hang up your wand and become a muggle therapist or something,” Draco huffs. 

“Shut it, Malfoy,” Harriet says reflexively, but there’s no real venom to it. It even sounds fond when Draco thinks of it later. 

—-

They develop a ritual of sorts, sneaking food from the Great Hall and eating it in the common rooms while everyone else is out at the meal. Draco pretends she hates the Gryffindor common room, but the truth is that she _loves_ being in Harriet’s space like this, loves how the fire is always crackling, how it feels _so_ much warmer than what she's used to. Harriet always gets sleepy when they eat at Gryffindor, probably because she’s not on guard, and Draco lives to watch her get heavy-eyed and cozy under her blanket, glasses fogged up as she sips tea, collarbones sometimes showing from the stretched-out neck of the hideous Weasley jumper she always wears to bed. 

It doesn’t take long for them to start talking about the war. Draco realizes how many shared experiences they have, even if she was in shackles beside Voldemort, and Harriet was the one coming to kill him. They discuss dark magic, how it smells, how it _feels,_ the particular, insidious ache it leaves in the skin like poison, like a fever. They talk about nightmares, about how difficult it is to keep food down, to cede to sleep when you _know_ there’s always the possibility that you’ll end up reliving things you don’t want to ever think about again the second you close your eyes. Draco keeps waiting for Harriet to get mad and tell her off, insist that what she’s been through is _nothing_ like Draco’s experience, but she never does. She listens and nods, eyes sincere and face troubled even when Draco’s body starts to double in on itself in shame and self-recrimination. When Draco finishes, face hot and eyes stinging, Harriet’ll nod and share something similar, as if they’re the same sort of girl, as if the way Harriet’s skin is singed is not from spells that Draco was firing. It’s humbling, and it hurts, but mostly it feels amazing. To be more than just heard but _listened to._ More than pitied but _understood._

They’re sitting side by side, watching the fire roar in the Gryffindor common room fireplace, when a lull in the conversation prompts Draco to blurt, “So...how much longer are you going to be Harriet Potter? Aren’t you all set up to marry into the Weasley clan?” She tries hard but ultimately fails to keep the sharp edge off her voice; it’s not that she hates the Weasleys anymore, now that she's learned the foundation of her hatred was based in things that she refuses to believe. But she _does_ hate the idea of Harriet marrying Jimmy Weasley, mousy and young and adoring her without complexity, without the understanding that Draco has of her soul, her depth, her flaws, her anger. 

Harriet glares at her for a good three seconds before pursing her lips and saying, “ _For_ _your information_ , Jimmy and I broke it off.” 

“Oh?” Draco asks, palms flexing around her teacup. They tipped a bit of firewhiskey into their tea, so she’s dizzy, lost. “Can’t imagine why,” she muses aloud instead of muttering to herself like she intends to. 

_“_ If you must know, it wasn’t anything scandalous...I love him a lot, but as a little brother, and I didn’t get that until it was too late. I just…I don't know,” she says, thumbing along the rim of her teacup, brow furrowed thoughtfully. Draco stares, holding her breath. “I’ve spent my whole life existing for other people, doing what _they_ want, what’s expected of me, and, like, defining myself that way. Jimmy…he wanted me, loved me, and I guess that made it feel like I wanted him, too? But it was only after the war, after realizing that I didn’t _know_ what I really wanted for myself because everything I’d ever done was because of _fate_ or other people or whatever, that I figured out I couldn't give him what he wanted. He cried, I cried, there was a lot of crying,” she explains, snorting before it turns into genuine giggles, and Draco wonders how drunk she is, if she drinks at all, or if this is some fluke. “Anyway, we’re just friends now. I’m not destined to be a Weasley more than I already am.” 

Draco’s heart is soaring, she’s thinking of so many things that she shouldn't be thinking of, imagining too many impossible futures. “So,” she says, sipping her spiked tea, tongue pressed to the roof of her mouth. “Do you have any idea of what you want yet?” 

“Not really,” Harriet replies, laughter dying in her throat. “I’m trying to figure it out.” 

_I could show you,_ Draco thinks, but does not say. 

—-

Firewhiskey is involved in her big revelation, just like that night in Bath with her cousin. They’re at Gryffindor again, and she's overly warm, stripping off her robes so that she's in nothing but pants, a thin vest, and a sports bra underneath. Covering her arms in some form of defense, she's not even _thinking_ about being vulnerable, she already is. It’s easy to pretend that she's friends with Harriet Potter on nights like these, when there’s no one to act like they’re the most unlikely pair of girls to spot together. They haven't even mentioned the Dark Lord once, they’re just spending time drinking and giggling together like teenage girls ought to do when they're not saving the world from or being manipulated by dark wizards. Harriet’s eyes and cheeks get bright on nights like these, and Draco desperately wants her to feel good and carefree and silly like this for as long as possible, so she sacrifices sincerity for smiles, and it feels like a fair trade. 

Perhaps she’s too mired in this veneer of false-comfort when she chooses to confess, eyes fixed on Harriet’s toes wiggling in her thick woolen socks by the fire. “You wanna hear something mad?” she asks, head spinning and cheeks hot. They were discussing their first year at Hogwarts only moments before, the thrill of the sorting, the fear of the unknown, the passion of their rivalry, and she feels invincible with the way that Harriet listened to her, leaning in across the fire, hair brushing her arm occasionally, smiling even though they’ve both laid bare how much they wanted to throttle the other off her broom. 

“Yeah, sure,” Harriet yawns without looking up, not really listening. Draco is thrilled that Potter gets this tired in front of her, that she drifts off in her presence, lets her guard down like she’s not afraid that Draco might kill her in her sleep anymore. 

Maybe that's why she feels brave enough to let it slip.’“I was so horrible to you when we were in school because I _fancied_ you. Had a proper crush, and it fucked me up...s’why I was such an absolute cunt.” 

It hangs in the air, and Draco should be frightened of Harriet’s reaction, but she’s not. If she’s established anything with her during this odd eighth year, it’s that there are always bigger and more awful demons they have to blame for the trauma than one another. Still, Harriet does not act how she expects. She thinks she’ll laugh at her confession, tease her, maybe prod her in the side and humiliate her until Draco can’t take it and tells her to shut up. Instead, Harriet makes a face, shakes her head, and sputters a bit. “Don’t…don’t lie about that sort of thing,” she stammers, waving her hand through the air dismissively. “M’still not sure you aren’t taking the piss every time we hang out.” 

Draco wrinkles her nose. “M’not…would never. It’s not a lie, just the embarrassing, unfortunate truth.” There must be a sincerity colouring her words because Harriet regards her carefully, eyes narrowed, mouth pressed into a flat line. 

“You _didn’t_ fancy me. That’s…that’s not what happened.” 

“Told you it was mad,” Draco scoffs, still too caught off-guard by Harriet’s dismissal to be proper angry.

“That’s _more_ than mad…Malfoy, you were _way_ too pretty for me. You were perfect, and I was this frizzy-haired, flat-chested nerd...and you made sure everyone knew. You _made fun of me_ , m’not an idiot,” she grumbles, rubbing at her hair self-consciously and making a face. 

Draco’s annoyed because for _once,_ she’s being at least ninety percent honest about something, and her reputation is preceding her too much for it to actually be read authentically. She can’t even enjoy Potter calling her _pretty_ and _perfect_. “Yeah, I made fun of you...because I _fancied_ you. I realize it’s low and embarrassing, trust me, I know,’” she sighs, throwing back a mouthful of firewhiskey straight from the bottle to silence the nagging insecurity in the back of her mind, telling her that she should have kept silent, kept this secret to the grave. It burns horribly on the way down, and she coughs. 

“Huh,” Harriet says, perhaps accepting it as best she can. “Well, I hated you because I was jealous, at least on some level.” 

“Jealous of _me_?” Draco slurs, rolling her eyes. “ _You_ were the hero, the famous one. Everyone fucking _loved_ you...and you had money! I...I—”

Harriet cuts her off with a scoff, her mouth a broken, kissable shape around the words, “Right, _I’m_ the one to be envied, but _you_ had a _family._ You _knew_ you were a witch, you didn’t grow up scrubbing floors until your knuckles were raw, wondering why your hair grew out of its cuts in 24 hours, you—”

“Ah, yes, Potter and her abandonment issues, no one’s ever suffered as much as she has,” Draco snarls without meaning to, the whole thing feeling bitter and toxic in her mouth the moment that she says it. Harriet shuts up as soon as it hits the air, and the fire crackles on, but the room suddenly feels cold as regret washes over Draco in an icy wave.

“Well,” Harriet snaps, gathering herself tighter and frowning, eyes fixed on the glow of the flame. “Potter and her abandonment issues. Potter who was orphaned, whose parents were killed by Voldemort, who was shipped off to her _abusive_ muggle aunt and uncle, who learned that she wasn’t worthy of love or affection or of being _wanted_ or valued beyond whatever she brought to the fucking war against—”

“I’m sorry, m’sorry,” Draco interjects, reaching out, palm smoothing up Harriet’s forearm in spite of herself, silencing her to a choked, stunned gasp. “Shit, m’sorry...you’re right, Potter, s’fine, breathe a little before you explode, god.” 

“Fuck,” Harriet gasps, eyes wet, chin ducked down to her chest so that her hair hides her face, chest visibly rising and falling with deep but rapid inhalations. Draco stares, watching them slow until Potter eventually says, “I’m not used to you apologizing,” before turning to look at her, face shiny and wet. Draco wants to touch her cheeks, use her thumbs to wipe away the tears, suck the saltiness away from her nail beds, which have been cracked and dry and bleach-frayed since the war. She’s in love with Harriet Potter, has been for most of her life, probably, even if it felt like so many _other_ things before the dawn of this clarity. This is where she begins, where she ends, and she wants to _tell_ Potter, wants to say, _It’s alright because I’m not used to apologizing, either, or to telling the truth, to confessing, to admitting that I have weaknesses where you can press your thumbs and watch me bleed._

 _“_ Well, I’m sorry,” she repeats plainly, hands sliding away from Potter’s skin, leaving nothing in their wake even if she feels like her touch stains. “I was being a twat, I…I know, and I get it. Why you feel that way, I mean, and you’re allowed to. I just…I spent so many years feeling like you were better than me in every way that I _forget,_ even now, everything that’s happened to you, too.” 

Harriet’s lips twist into a crooked smile, and Draco wants desperately to kiss them. _She’d_ never abandon her, _she’d_ make her feel so wanted that she’d suffocate and wish she remembered how to breathe. Draco would love her until she was sick of love, she’d drown her in it. Draco wants Harriet, the real and whole and imperfect and broken reality of her, more than anyone has wanted anything in the whole of history. “S’funny, innit, you thinking I was better. All this time, I felt the opposite...that you believed _you_ were better than _me_ because of my friends, my mum’n’dad, my marks, my _flat chest_ and stupid hair, everything.” 

Draco doesn't know what to say because there's nothing fair or appropriate that she _can_ say, not, _I dreamed about sucking your nipples when I was fourteen,_ or, _despite how I hate them, I still wish_ _I had friends as loyal as Granger and Weasley._ Nothing will work because she dug herself into this hole with years of misplaced cruelty, so instead, she shrugs, “Your hair isn’t stupid.” 

Harriet dissolves into laughter. “You made me feel like it was when we were teenagers,” as if they aren't teenagers anymore, as if they've aged a decade in the past year spent fighting, bleeding, hoping things would change. “You had something mean to say about it every time you saw me.”

“Well, that’s because I _fucking fancied you,_ Potter, and hated myself for it...hated you for making me feel that way and didn’t know how to express it...all that horrid adolescent nonsense, m’sorry I was an idiot,” she gripes, and Harriet laughs again, sipping her drink and shaking her head so vigorously that a curl falls from her lazy ponytail. Draco thinks of pushing it back behind her ear and clenches fists in her blanket. 

“Speaking of hair, I like yours short,” Harriet announces, nodding to Draco’s hacked pixie cut. “When I first saw you in the Great Hall, I didn’t recognize you. Or, I suppose my body did, my gut, but it took a minute for my eyes to catch up...because of your hair.” 

“Thank you, I think,” Draco says, not sure if it’s a compliment or not, stomach lurching in futile hope all the same. She loves her so, wants her so. Every second they spend side by side without tearing each other’s throats out feels like flirting, and it’s confusing.

“I still don't actually believe you,” Harriet tells her. “About fancying me.” 

Draco shrugs; she supposes they’ll have to work on that bit. 

—-

Her mum sends her depressing letters, her owl landing on her windowsill with a guilty heaviness every time, like she _knows_ she’s delivering bad news. 

It’s not even _technically_ bad, it’s the lack of negativity or grisly updates or authenticity _at all_ that’s so depressing. Narcissa’s letters to Draco this term are more or less the same as they were before the war, even though _both_ of them know that everything has changed. 

_Your father is taking some time off still, puttering around the house a bit, even in the garden if it’s an agreeable day. I’ve addressed invitations for a Christmas party, but I think there just might be too much going on this winter to expect people to come, so I’m holding out on sending them just yet. Hopefully spirits will lift as it gets colder! Society does not stop just because of a few political changes, but alas, that seems to be how other families are acting,_ she writes, as if the post-war magical world is no different than an unexpected bout of inclement weather, as if Lucius is tired and growing older, instead of irreparably mad. 

Draco usually crumples the letters in her fist before she gets to the end, the part where her mother inevitably tells her that she’s looking forward to seeing her at the winter break. 

She has no intention of going back. She’s only just rid herself of the stench of clotted blood and bleach, only _just_ begun waking in the Slytherin dormitories knowing where she is instead of panicking that she’s back in the manor, Death Eaters drunk and passed out or bleeding in the hallways for her to pick her way through on stocking feet, breath held, if she wants to go to the loo in the middle of the night without risking punishment, torture. She’s only just _now_ feeling tentatively and nebulously safe, settling into this strange routine with her no longer enemy, not yet friend. The last thing she wants to do is set herself back, sink into the somber, dead, rot-stained hallways she so recently dragged herself from. 

She sends an owl back with a short and indisputable letter: _I will be staying at Hogwarts until further notice. No need to consider my accommodations this Christmas as I will not be returning. Best._

Her owl shoots her a somewhat perplexed and disapproving look as she ties the letter to her leg, well aware that it’s not of a standard or appropriate weight. “If anything comes from the manor between now and January,” she tells her, eyes narrowed definitively, “make sure it doesn’t get to me. Drop it in the lake or something.” 

Her owl very nearly rolls her giant orange eyes before taking off clumsily in the snow, which has just started to fall, fine and silent as Draco watches her go, trying to tuck her coarse hair behind her ear even though she knows it’s still too short. 

Her appearance is stuck in a strange liminal space: not quite the effortlessly cold, glamourous thing that she used to be, strutting the halls with her silver-white hair trailing behind her like the effervescence off the top of a newly uncorked bottle of potion, but a far cry from the thin, tear-sticky girl who cut it all off into a pale halo on the floor of her father’s study. She’s not sure who this new version of herself is, what she looks like, how she wields her beauty, if she’s beautiful at all. Before the war, she was so certain of her looks, her breeding, knew exactly how to dress to accentuate her curves without ever looking cheap or tawdry. Now, her body feels strange and extra, like something that she’s forced to carry around with her, a lump of scar tissue that only fires a nerve impulse if it’s brushing knees with Harriet Potter over tea and stolen scones. 

She sighs and drags herself in front of the mirror, blinking at her reflection, trying to reconcile what she sees with what she remembers. Always, she draws a blank: she’s changed and finds herself unrecognizable, like her face is the face of a distant relative, someone from a faded photograph moving too quickly to make out. She looks…transitional. Between past and future, the manor and Hogwarts, trying to find her place. 

The only constant is loving Harriet Potter. 

Loving her more than hating her now, which, _well_ , is not ideal, even if it’s the truth. She pushes her hair out of her face, charms it with a glamour to stay slicked back like that, and blinks her eyes, which seem so much more sad and watery and blue than grey these days. She knows Potter will probably go to the Weasleys for the break, even if they haven’t discussed it, surrounded by other people who love her, people who will shower her in god-awful sweaters and sweets, hopefully, since she still hasn't put on enough weight post-war to look healthy, despite her admirable attempts to eat her weight in puds. People who not only love her, but who fought with her. Stood by her side. 

The inside of Draco’s mouth tastes bitter, and she makes a face at herself, at the girl she's become. She hates the idea of a Weasley Christmas and can’t imagine a place where she would fit in _less._ She doesn't even _want_ to be invited, and it’s unfair for her to expect anything different from Harriet, so she's resigned to apathetic solitude and banks of snow. 

Still, she pathetically and futilely and _selfishly_ hopes that something will change. Draco hates eating supper alone. 

—-

It’s their last day of classes before the break, and the Great Hall is especially loud that night with almost the same raucous energy that Draco remembers from her prior years at Hogwarts, something close to a celebration, punctuated with the pop of crackers and bouts of shrieking and laughter and carols. It's not _quite_ the same, though; there are fewer students this year than ever before, so the tables feel oddly empty, and even amid the cheer, there’s a heaviness that settles over the meal. The muted sadness seems to reflect back in the enchanted ceiling, which is monotone with fog, candlelight-fuzzy and bleary. Potter wanted to eat with the Gryffindor first-years for some reason, probably a weird, moralistic obligation, and Draco tries not to feel too sorry for herself as she eats alone, having pushed away any potential allies she had in her own house by allowing Potter into their common room. 

It’s odd, how reliant on her company Draco has become, even if much of it is silent or tense, the two of them agreeing to just sit side by side and study together if their conversation meanders too far down a path that divides them. Most often, their similarities in experience outweigh their massive differences, and Draco can provide Harriet with reassurance and familiarity without isolating her. But other times, it will rise to the surface _why_ they both know so much about what it feels like to have Voldemort’s magic scorch your skin, and Harriet will get quiet and sad, and Draco will get stroppy and hurt and mired in self-loathing, and sometimes their night will never come back from that. 

But still, Draco misses their routine when it’s different. After she finishes her roast and potatoes (which she _forced_ herself to eat because swallowing is much harder when one is sitting alone obsessing over Potter than it is when one is sitting beside Potter and teasing her for voluntarily wearing muggle clothes), she stomps over to the Gryffindor table, prepared to publicly demand attention if it comes to that. It’s stupid that they can hardly be seen together without scandal, they’re not even _doing_ anything (much to Draco’s dismay, but not the point), so there’s no reason a tentative friendship should be so _furtive,_ so controversial. She stops in front of Potter, mouth dry. 

The first-years that are huddled around Harriet like she's a warm fire on a frosty day look terrified as Draco approaches. Dean Thomas very nearly pulls his wand at the table, and it’s only because Harriet looks up, notices, and checks his arm that Draco doesn’t end up cursed or something. “Well, I see how things are on this side of the room,” she scowls, pursing her lips. “Haven’t told your friends I’m not worth killing, Potter?” 

Instead of angry, Harriet looks exhausted, face so drawn and weary that Draco almost feels _bad_. She’s imagining what a frantic backpedal from this situation might look like when Potter gets up, grabs Draco’s wrist, and drags her out of the Great Hall as a dozen pairs of first-year eyes burn into their backs. “So you can’t even be _seen_ with me?” she hisses, and even if Draco means for it to come out biting, it _doesn’t,_ it just sounds defensive, hurt. 

“Look, we can hang out sometimes...I _enjoy_ hanging out with you for some fucking reason,” Potter explains in a hush as she rounds on her in the corridor, chatter from the hall seeming far away, distant and underwater now that the blood is pounding so hard in Draco’s ears. “But you can’t expect to just walk right up to a bunch of Gryffindors, people who _fought in the war,_ people with muggle-born family members, and expect to be treated how I treat you. It’s going to take a long time for people to not hate you, Malfoy, let alone _trust_ you.” 

_It’s going to take a long time for me to not hate you_ is what Draco hears, and she takes a deep breath, trying hard to not react, to remain as impassive and cold as she used to be able to effortlessly embody. She fails, though, and she can feel her cheeks heating up, her chin wobbling when she tries to open her mouth and speak. They stand there for a long time, facing each other, Draco’s heart pounding, Harriet looking so tired and annoyed and desperate to get back to her mountain of biscuits. 

“I understand,” Draco eventually says when she composes herself, and Harriet relaxes a bit, chest deflating.She could leave it at that, and she _should,_ maybe, but the terrible truth is that she _wants_ more than this, more than a hastily patched wound, the two of them alone in a corridor while everyone else celebrates. So, she presses on. “I would, however, like to see you before you leave for Christmas,” she grinds out. “Later tonight, perhaps...or tomorrow, for breakfast or a _walk,_ I don’t know. I’m not exactly _overflowing_ in the friend department right now, as much as it pains me to admit, and you are one of the few people who doesn’t look at me like I’m evil or a ghost, and...well. Believe it or not, I like to talk to you.” 

“I like to talk to you, too,” Harriet sighs after a long, loaded pause, mouth twisting into a frown as she says it like it pains her to admit. “And I don’t believe it, but it’s true.” 

Draco allows herself the smallest of smirks. 

“I have a bottle of muggle brandy,” Harriet announces, shrugging. “Arthur Weasley gave it to me. I know you’re an absolute twat about everything, but I won't drink it all myself, and firewhiskey gives me a headache, so I could bring it to your common room tonight? After dinner and packing, I mean.” 

Draco suddenly doubts the status of her reformation, wondering if she will _ever_ be able to drink muggle liquor without a knee-jerk shudder, but she won’t survive two weeks of not seeing Harriet Potter’s stupid cheeks hot and bright and tipsy, so she concedes. “I’ll try not to choke.” 

—-

They stay up far too late drinking, and Draco is both horrified and self-congratulatory over how palatable she finds the brandy. It goes straight to her head, though, and after two bitter drinks mixed with elderberry juice, she can hardly stand. Harriet is no better off than she is, and they’re lying too close on the leather couch, both of them tucked under a silky green blanket that Draco found folded and dusty on top of a bookcase. Their sides are pressed flush, and she knows this is terribly dangerous, but Potter hasn’t shoved her away or said a single thing about it, she’s only repeating how dizzy she is between bouts of hysterical, contagious laughter. 

They’ve been paying exploding snap with a deck missing a significant number of cards, and neither of them remember the rules, really, but they keep getting their fingers scorched and Harriet’s hair is still smoking and the whole thing feels perversely hilarious. Two eighteen-year-old girls, former enemies, tentatively forging a friendship after having been on opposite sides of a war, trying to play a kid’s card game shit-faced on muggle brandy. Draco can’t stop snorting, can’t stop herself from pressing the outside plane of her thigh into Potter’s, grabbing cards from her with their fingers brushing and tangling together so that she can shuffle them properly. 

It turns out that she _can’t_ shuffle them properly at all and manages to set them all off at once like firecrackers or a spell from a broken wand. Potter yelps and covers her face, and at least _Draco_ has the sense to dive under the blanket for cover, so that’s how they end up here together, panting and cackling while the remainder of the deck explodes and smokes around them. Harriet’s breath smells sweet and hot and boozy as she giggles uncontrollably, and Draco presses closer, her burning face shifting against the skin of her shoulder, heart pounding in her own throat. They lie here for a moment while the cards continue to go off, though less frequently, like the remaining kernels in a pot of popped corn. 

Harriet gets quiet, her giggles reducing to wheezes, and when her hand suddenly falls on the back of Draco’s neck and cups her there, Draco very nearly panics. Are they _having a cuddle?_ Is Potter _petting_ her? Is this just something Gryffindor friends _do_ when their connection isn’t based on shared trauma, _touch_ each other casually? She freezes before she softens up a bit, head swimming as she tilts her face up and murmurs, “Potter?” 

It’s then that she realizes Harriet has drifted off, fallen asleep here on this couch with her legs tangled up in Draco’s, and the touch very well might be an accident. Draco sighs and tries to will her stomach to unclench. “Wonderful, Potter, how’m’I ‘sposed to get you to your homey, _humble_ Weasley celebration, hmmm? _”_ she complains aloud since Harriet won’t hear her, voice slurring. She detaches herself from the heavy weight of Harriet’s body, kicking out from under the blanket and stumbling to the floor, where she sits for a moment, trying to regain her bearings. There are smoking card bits everywhere, ash littered all over the couch, two empty glasses, and the sinister remains of the brandy sitting on the coffee table, glowing and backlit from the dying embers of the fire. 

She clumsily uses magic to clean up, successful only after several failed attempts because she can’t persuade this wand to work for her unless she’s totally focused, and she’s too drunk to focus on anything at all right now. Once the ash has been whisked away into nothingness, she strips out of her robe, drapes it over Harriet, and climbs onto the opposite couch to sleep, too dizzy to imagine making it up the stairs and to her bed, but also not wanting to leave Harriet here, alone, in the Slytherin common room to be harassed or hexed or something. Plus, Draco’s selfish. She wants all the time she can get, even if it’s just lying on a couch three feet away from her. 

When she wakes up, she hadn’t even realized that she’d fallen asleep. The common room is dark and silent, and she’s blinking and shivering and trying to make sense of where she is when she realizes that the fire has gone out, and that’s why she’s so distractingly cold and disoriented. “ _Lumos!”_ she mutters, relieved when it actually works. The beam of light falls over the adjacent couch, and her stomach turns over when she remembers. _Potter._ Potter’s face smiling and warm, inches from her own, Potter’s white vest clinging to her sternum when she shrugged off her jumper, Potter’s hand on the back of her neck, an accident, a miracle. She’s visibly trembling under the cloak and blanket right now, teeth chattering, and Draco stands up and wobbles over to her without letting herself think about it too much. 

“Potter,” she hisses, shaking her shoulder a few times, skin goose-pimpled under her hand. “ _Potter,_ wake up. If you freeze to death here, they'll suspect me of murder and take me to Azkaban.” 

Harriet mumbles in her sleep and buries her face further into her arm, which makes her glasses dig into her face in an uncomfortable enough position that she finally wakes up, blinking. “Shit,” she yawns, rolling onto her back. “It’s cold.” 

“The fire died,” Draco explains, whispering for no reason other than it’s dark. “Can you walk upstairs? M’not gonna let you go back to Gryffindor, so don't ask,” she adds, wrapping her own arms tightly around herself to quell the shivering. She's sobered up significantly, but her head still hurts and she’s off balance.The idea of Harriet, who holds her liquor poorly, stumbling back out of the dungeons and onto those treacherous changing staircases that lead up to the tower makes her queasy. “Don’t look at me like that,” she tells her, getting a hand under Harriet’s armpit and hauling her to a sitting position, ignoring her wrinkled, disapproving expression. “You can have the bed.” 

They stumble together, Harriet leaning on her a few times but at least having enough sense to not give her full weight. She’s shivery but solid, and Draco wants to get her warm, feels dizzy and confused by the wild quality that the night possesses when it’s silent and there’s no one to watch and judge them. She has never touched Harriet so much outside the context of a fistfight, and it makes her _heart_ hurt, to guide her to bed, to watch her flop back onto the forest-green duvet, mess about with her glasses and push them up her nose without taking them off. “I’ll sleep here,” she decides, yawning, “but only if you do, too. M’not gonna let you leave me here in the Slytherin dormitories unattended. M’not daft.” 

“Alright,” Draco agrees, even though it sounds like a terrible idea. She looks at the ground as she mechanically gets undressed, trading her skirt and leggings for black silk pajama bottoms, cheeks burning as Harriet watches her with her brow furrowed, like she wasn't expecting Draco’s legs to be so weak and pale. “But only because you _insist,_ not because I want to. Remember that when you wake up sober and in my bed in the morning, Potter.” 

The sheets are cold as she slides in, but Harriet’s warm, and they end up notched together out of instinct, facing each other again, foreheads a whisper away from touching. Draco’s trying so hard not to read anything into this strange, sudden physical closeness, but when Harriet leans closer and whispers, “This is fucking _mad,”_ her grip on reality crumbles, like the shore dissolving into the tide. Their brows press together, and Potter’s mouth is open and panting, but Draco’s terrified to ask _what_ is mad, _what_ specifically, in all this madness, does Potter consciously register?

“Do you still?” Harriet asks under her breath, licking her lips. 

Draco shudders, closes her eyes, and asks, “What _ever_ are you talking about, Potter?” even though she thinks she knows what she’s getting at. 

“You know. When you said you fancied me...do you still?” she clarifies, and, _Merlin,_ Draco cannot take this, she can’t _lie_ when she’s here, trembling against Harriet Potter, who’s gripping her elbows and breathing into her mouth and asking her if she still feels the thing that she’s felt for the majority of her fucked up life. She could _try_ to lie, but it wouldn’t come out right, and that's somehow more mortifying than confessing. 

So she closes her eyes and asks, “Would you want me to get out of this bed if I did?” 

“No,” Harriet says, and then she kisses her. 

The world stops for a moment, the entirety of Draco’s history of jealousy and insecurity and fear stripped down to Harriet Potter’s lips, soft and warm and hesitant, chastely pressing against her own. She kisses back; how could she not? She’s thought about this, what her thick black hair might feel like in her fist, how her narrow body might fit between her legs. But right now, as it happens, she's the one who can’t think, can’t move, can’t breathe. She can only lie here, heart pounding, hoping that she doesn’t wake up if this happens to be a dream. 

Harriet rubs her hands up Draco’s sides, the movement gentle and experimental as her palms come up to cup her throat, and if Draco was in her right mind, she’d be worried that this was all an elaborate ruse to kill her when she's most vulnerable, but she’s _not_ in her right mind. She’s lost, taking Harriet’s kisses softly, slowly, carefully, like she might lose her if she deepens it, slips in her tongue, even though she _desperately_ wants to, wants more of this sleepy, cinnamon-warm heat no matter if it kills her. Harriet pulls back, laughs in a gust of breath, and Draco thinks, _this is it, the moment she mocks me, ridicules me, laughs at what I’ve become._

 _“_ You weren't joking,” Harriet whispers, licking the corner of Draco’s mouth and making her melt, whimper. “You fancied me.” 

“Fancy you,” Draco corrects, smoothing her hand tentatively up Harriet’s arm and tightening her grip, feeling like she could do anything tonight, and none of it would count or be remembered or _matter_ past the strange, dark confines of her sheets. “Love you, even...have loved you this whole stupid time.” 

“It didn't make sense when you told me, not at first,” Harriet mumbles, thumbing over the burning plane of Draco’s cheek, kissing her so briefly that she lurches forward, yearns for more. “But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Not just you…but me. Why I could never let you go, even if you were horrible to me. Why I wanted to come back and save you, even if you were still with _him,_ working for him. You were…every nonsense thing that I could never understand, all this time. But this,” she adds, leaning in, kissing her again, tentatively at first and then harder as Draco moans. “I finally get it.” 

“What can...what are you ready for? How can I touch you?” Draco begs, out of her mind, palms all over Harriet and greedy for her skin. “I’ll go so slow if you want that...or I’ll take you now.” 

Harriet squirms, blushes. “I don’t know what I want,” she admits, pushing her skinny thigh between Draco’s but not close enough to press into her cunt, a maddening few inches away so that all Draco can do is whine and try not to bear down. “I’ve never, er, well...all I know is that I want what _I want,_ not what anyone else wants for me, expects from me, you know? But, erm, I haven’t spent too much time thinking about what that is...just know that it’s you.” 

Draco writhes, stomach a mess of hungry knots, heart rabbiting against her ribcage so hard that the whole of her aches. She tips forward and kisses Harriet again, smoothing her tongue over her lower lip prudently, just to see if she shrieks and pulls away, but she _doesn’t,_ she presses closer, gasps, and opens her mouth. They snog heatedly for a moment, Draco out of her mind with thrilled, breathless anxiety, thinking, _it’s you, it’s you, it’s you_ , over and over again. “Erm,” Harriet pants as they break apart to breathe, stars making Draco’s vision hazy around the edges, “I’ll tell you to stop if it’s too much.” 

“You’d better,” Draco murmurs, nodding, rolling Harriet onto her back and bracketing her narrow hips with her own knees, looking down at her swollen mouth and bright eyes. She gently plucks her glasses off her nose and puts them on the bedside table before dipping down and kissing her again, pushing against her hips with her own, feeling their chests press together, Harriet’s sternum heaving against her own heartbeat.

They snog for a long, long time, long enough that Draco’s skin is dewy with perspiration in spite of how cold she was only moments before. Harriet doesn’t stop her when she kisses down her neck, sucking dark, bruising marks into it and making her cry out. She doesn't stop her when she gets her shirt up, razing her nails delicately over the concave of her shuddering stomach, her expanding ribcage, the skin pebbled and drawn tight with gooseflesh when she gets closer to the swell of her breasts or the top of her waistband. Draco doesn’t _dare_ touch anything beyond those imaginary lines; she’s content to feel Harriet’s skin and swallow her groans, to make fists in her curls and grind her down into the mattress until it creaks. But Harriet grabs her hand at some point and stops it where it’s rubbing up her side and drags it down between her legs, forcing Draco to choke back a sob. “You can,” Harriet whispers, nosing against her cheek, kissing her way through the tears like she doesn't notice them. “If you want.” 

Draco nods, and Harriet kicks her way out of her leggings but not her knickers, so Draco uses trembling fingers to tug the crotch of them aside, leaving them on as she gently smoothes her way through the thatch of coarse hair between Harriet’s quaking thighs. Everything is hot, slick, slippery, and Draco doesn't even _try_ to bite back the messy, wordless sound that escapes her lips as she feels her. “Harriet,” she moans, rubbing her where she’s hardest, most sensitive, feeling her tense up and shudder beneath her touch. “You’re...you _want_ it.” 

Harriet’s thighs fall open as she rolls her hips into Draco’s touch. “Very much,” she whimpers, and Draco kisses her hard, fucking her tongue into her mouth, needing every bit of her that she can get before she positively _dies_ from the thrill of having something that she’s spent _years_ yearning for without a single hope of ever holding it in her palm, burning and slick. 

“You’re…you’re mine, you always have been, no one else, not a _single_ other person has ever see you like this, like I have, no one else knows what you need, do they?” she babbles, pumping her fingers up into Harriet’s cunt, loving how sloppy it is, the sucking sensation around her, the way that Harriet keens and arches her back. 

“Fuck you,” Harriet grinds out, chasing Draco’s fingers, fisting in her sheets desperately. “Yes, _yes,_ always you. Even if I hated you, it was you...fuck, what are you doing to me!?” 

“Wanna make you feel good,” Draco rasps, crooking her fingers, opening her mouth on the rapid thud of Harriet’s pulse. “Wanna make you feel so good that you never think of anyone else again. Even if you’re far away from me...even if you try to forget me.” 

Harriet reaches up and pulls her hair, sharply and aimlessly at first and then with purpose, dragging her close enough to kiss. Draco lets her fingers slide out before rubbing them in hungry, fierce little circles over Harriet’s clit, determined to bring her off, make her come, make her _scream_ loud enough to wake up this whole fucking castle. Harriet Potter, in _her_ bed, on _her_ fingers, head thrown back so that the lovely brown ripple of her throat is exposed to a litany of bites. “Ah,” Harriet winces, pushing back into the pressure. “M’not in danger of _forgetting you,_ Malfoy.” 

“I love you,” Draco blurts, the only words left in the whole of her vocabulary, the only thing in her head. It’s to those words that Harriet comes, spine locking up as she humps Draco’s hand to finish and collapses sweat-slicked and heaving against her, eyes closed. It’s the prettiest thing Draco has ever seen, even if it’s the last time. The only time. 

Draco kisses the fluttering lids of her eyes before she sucks the spice and stickiness off her fingers, her own eyes drifting closed. “Are you alright?” she asks then, distantly worried that Harriet might have died with the way her whole body has gone slack. She pets her heaving stomach, loving how pale her hand looks against Harriet’s lovely dark skin. 

“Dunno,” Harriet slurs, turning to face her, burying her nose in her throat. “You smell like…mint. And juniper. Or some sort of pine…grapefruit, maybe. S’nice.” 

Draco makes a face, hiding it in Harriet’s frizzy mess of curls. “Are you still drunk?” 

“No,” she sighs, letting her palm settle tentatively on Draco’s waist, squeezing her gently, feeling her like she’s only just remembered that she can touch, too. “But all my friends and past-me might not believe that something like this could have happened _without_ me being pissed. So I’m…I’m thinking, I dunno, that I might be predisposed, somehow.” 

“You aren’t making sense,” Draco tells her, pressing a constellation of kisses to her shoulder, kiss after kiss, star after star. It’s the only way to hide her mad, reflexive smile.

“I know...lots of things about this don't make sense. Except the parts that make too much sense.” 

“You aren’t helping your case, Potter.” 

“Can I stay here...through the night?” Harriet asks then, tilting her head up to kiss Draco’s neck, lips soft and wet and full, tender enough to make her eyes slip closed, her body shudder. “Not that I could walk if I wanted to.” 

“You can stay,” Draco promises, meaning, _please, please stay...for tonight, tomorrow, the holiday break, the rest of my life, I can face this world, maybe, if I get to have you in my arms at night._ Harriet hears none of that, of course. She just nods, rolling onto her side so that Draco is pressed to her back, arm curled protectively around her side. 

“Thank you,” she yawns at some point, voice sleepy and slow. “Might not have realized some things if you hadn’t told me.” 

And it makes Draco feel brave, if only for a moment, as dawn creeps closer and the night goes on. 

—-

Despite her delirious exhaustion, she doesn’t sleep soundly, too stunned that any of this happened to relax enough to actually slip into a restful sleep. The sun is on its way up when she finally drifts off, forehead resting on the top-most knob of Potter’s spine, face between her shoulder blades where she has pressed so many tender, lingering kisses. 

As Harriet stirs, Draco keeps her eyes shut against the glare of the morning and clings to her waist, hoping that if she holds her tightly enough, wills them back to sleep, Harriet won’t have to take the train away from her. That they won’t have to talk about the improbable, impractical future (or lack thereof) ahead. 

Instead, Harriet rolls over, rubs her face, and mutters, “Fuck.” 

“Good morning to you, too,” Draco rasps, vision hazy as she blinks away sleep. 

“Did we…we did, didn't we. Merlin,” Harriet mumbles, and Draco’s still hanging on to the slight possibility that she's about to add, _and it was wonderful, forget the Weasley Christmas, let’s stay here and shag for a week, I love you, too,_ even though her gut is sinking, scalp prickling with dread. 

“We did, yes, glad it was so _memorable,”_ she snaps, but it gets lost in the creaking of her mattress as Potter abruptly sits up, kicks the cover off, and scrambles out. Draco is given no kiss, no touch, not even _eye contact._ It shouldn't be surprising, she was _bracing_ herself for this, but it still hurts terribly, a pain so fierce and sudden in her chest that she actually splays her hand over her solar plexus, feeling for a wound, for the residual glow of magic in case Potter somehow hit her with a spell. There’s nothing but skin, though, unbroken and bloodless. “So I guess that’s it, then,” she croaks, throat catching around her voice and making it reedy. “You’re ashamed, you _hate_ me—”

“ _Malfoy,_ ” Harriet snarls, finally looking at her, gaze fierce and green and flashing as she fumbles for her glasses. Draco’s struck by the memory of the frame digging into her cheeks as they kissed for the first time and, later, of her taking them off, and she wants to throw up. “It’s _more complicated_ than that. I’m not…shit,” she yelps, looking down and making an affronted face as she realizes that she’s still in her knickers. “It was...it was just a mistake, is all,” she sputters as she fishes around in Draco’s sheets for her leggings because she took them off, kicked them down, and _spread her legs for Draco’s hand_ last night. 

“A mistake,” Draco echoes, but she can’t hear herself. The pounding of blood in her ears is deafening, the whole of her suddenly blanched and heavy and aching with grief. She wants to be angry, wants to kick off her duvet and crowd Potter up against the wall and _yell_ at her, call her names, tell her that she’s a self-important twat who thinks she's too good for anyone to _touch_ , but Draco remembers the _sounds_ that she made, the way she kissed her. Harriet can lie all she wants and push her away, but no matter what, Draco will remember. _I told you that I loved you,_ she wants to scream, but what ends up coming out is a weak, tear-thick, “I love you.”

She hadn’t meant to say a single thing if it wasn’t meant to hurt, but instead she’s the one hurting, sitting here tangled in her own cold sheets while Harriet Potter looks at her like she's gone mad. “ _Stop_ saying that!” she yells, face incredulous before she throws her hands up in the air, fingers visibly trembling with anger, horror, something. 

“Fine!” Draco spits out. “Just fucking leave, Potter, run off to your goody-goody friends who’ve never done a single shit thing in their entire lives, go shower and wash me off since you _clearly_ can’t _stand_ the thought of touching me in broad daylight, Malfoy and her _deplorable,_ filthy—”

“I love you, too!” Harriet screams, grabbing Draco’s discarded robe, balling it up, and lobbing it at her bitterly, like a child. Draco’s mouth falls open, and she hears her, but she can’t believe it, can’t process anything beyond the sudden fierce heat on her own cheeks. “But I can’t _expect_ my friends or anyone else in my life to, can I? I can’t expect them to even _tolerate_ you, I would _never_ ask them to, you absolute _insufferable_ bitch. My god, you never think of anyone but yourself, do you?” she fumes, grabbing her glasses and her jumper and stalking out of Draco’s dormitory without looking back. “I can’t look at you right now, I need to catch a train,” she shouts over her shoulder before slamming the heavy mahogany door behind her and stomping down the hallway and eventually the stairs. 

It takes Draco a few seconds to recover, and when she does, she realizes that she's just sitting there, openly crying, throat so sore that she can hardly swallow. Harriet’s _leaving_ , though, and she can’t let that happen, so she launches out of bed barefoot and in her pajamas to tear out of the room after her, nearly tripping down the stair as she shouts, “Potter! _Potter!_ Wait! _Harriet!”_ to no avail. 

She’s panting and red-faced by the time she makes it to the common room, but Harriet’s already gone, not even bothering to take the brandy along with her, so Draco is forced to stand there in front of the empty fireplace, staring at the half-empty bottle as the taste of last night haunts her: liquor, Potter’s spit, Potter’s skin. She sinks to the floor and tries to catch her breath, but it never comes, so all she can do is stagger back up the stairs fighting back tears, wiping her eyes repeatedly, and pretending that this is what she actually wanted all along. 

She keeps that up for the time it takes to get to her bed, but she’s not the girl she used to be. Her ice has melted, her heart has been broken, her skin is scarred from war, and she doesn't know how to ignore her pain the way she used to, doesn't _remember_ what willful cruelty feels like without the bite of guilt. So as she collapses back into her rumpled sheets that smell like Harriet Potter, she cedes to the tide and cries. 

—-

She has no idea how much time passes, but night comes and goes, and she sleeps fitfully without eating, only dragging herself from the trap of her duvet to go to the toilet and grab a loo roll to blow her nose into since all her silk handkerchiefs are full. She has never felt more disgusting or pitiful, and the only thing to do is revel in it, give herself over to the grotesque mess of her feelings. She's mired so deeply in them that she doesn't even register the knock on her dormitory door until it repeats, faster and fiercer this time, followed by a muffled, exasperated voice insisting, “Malfoy, open up, I know you’re in there.” 

It sounds like Potter, but of course it does. Draco’s heartbroken, so everything sounds like her. She scrunches her face up against her pillow, inhaling the pathetic, salty-sick smell of her own tears and wondering who on earth has stuck around long enough to know that she’s withering away in here. 

“ _Malfoy!_ Please, I need to talk to you,” the voice pleads, and, _fuck,_ Draco sits bolt upright, hair adhering to her sticky brow, face palpably puffy and red and blotchy, and that’s _not_ how she wants to look if Potter is indeed standing outside her locked door, and she most definitely _is_ because Draco’s body suddenly knows it with the certainty that only comes with having been so very much in love and obsessed with the same person for years; her heart is trained to sense her proximity under any circumstances. 

She thinks about playing dead, but she’s never been able to ignore Potter, even when she was certain that she _only_ hated her. So she gets up, finger-combs her hair, and walks to the door before taking a deep breath and unlatching it. Sure enough, Potter is standing on the other side, unruly black curls poking out from under a knit beanie, the ends of them damp with melted snow. And she looks beautiful, she’s always beautiful to Draco, but she also looks _terrible,_ like she hasn't slept or eaten in two days (or however long it’s been), either. Draco wants to throw herself into her arms, but she remains steely as they blink at each other, feet rooted to the floor. “What are you doing here?” she asks, voice managing to be effectively icy even if it’s somewhat ragged from tears.

“Erm, Ron made me come back...sort of,” Potter mumbles, and it’s not what Draco wants to hear _at all,_ but she bites her tongue, waiting. “It’s a long story,” she adds, shifting her weight, eyes scanning the door jam, the room behind Draco, like she can’t look her in the eye without getting angry again. Or perhaps crying. “But basically I was a hysterical mess, and he was worried and told me I better go sort out my shit with you or else he was going to come hex you, and I thought that was rather unfair, so...here I am. Also, I couldn't stand being away from you.” 

“You’re an idiot, Potter,” Draco tries to snap, but it comes out shaky, and suddenly she's crying again, covering her face with her hands because she doesn't want Harriet to see how ugly and crumpled her face gets when she’s upset like this. It doesn't matter, though, because Harriet is dropping her trunk and stepping inside, pulling her hands away from her face so that she can cup it between her own cold palms and draw Draco close, into the heat of her body, and if Draco meant to resist this, she’s nothing but wheat in the wind now, bending to Harriet’s pressure like she isn’t already broken. “I hate you,” she whispers fiercely into Potter’s thudding pulse, hands shoving up inside her jumper to cup her lower back, where her skin is burning hot and so smooth. “I...fucking... _hate—”_

 _“_ Stop,” Potter orders, squeezing her, backing her toward the bed where they topple in a mess of limbs, the snow on Harriet’s cap falling down onto the mattress and melting as they roll into it. “You don’t...orr you do, but you also want me here, yeah? I’ll leave if you don’t, I just, I thought—”

“Potter, do not _fucking_ leave again, Merlin,” Draco grits out harshly, rubbing her snotty-nose into Harriet’s neck, relieved that she doesn't seem to care, she just kicks her shoes off and climbs fully into bed, palming all over Draco’s shoulders and arms and ribcage with awed, clumsy strokes, almost as if she doesn't know where or how to touch her but wants to so badly that she’ll risk fucking up just to feel her skin. “I was falling apart,” Draco admits in a hush, even though she _hates_ admitting such things. It seems imperative in this moment that Potter hears it so that she can put her back together again, so that Draco doesn’t have to repeat herself or get vulnerable later, when she's less of a pitiful mess. 

Harriet pulls back and looks at her. Her eyes darken, the green receding as her pupils blow out and her gaze becomes half-lidded and heavy, giving Draco’s stomach time to plummet before she kisses her. 

Draco whimpers and kisses her back, and they fumble together for awhile, touching and snogging with no grace or precision or even intent, just desperation, hunger, everything that Draco’s been dreaming of and thinking she would never feel again: Harriet’s messy, inexperienced tongue, her careful lips, her warm skin. It's only when Harriet bravely slides her hand up to cup Draco’s left tit through her shirt that she stops her, shaking so hard that her teeth chatter, her heart nearly pounding out of her chest. “No, wait,” she sputters, squeezing Harriet’s wrist and feeling the pulse quicken under the pressure. 

“You don’t want me to?” Harriet asks, hips pausing their rhythmic pumping, thumbs smoothing down Draco’s cheekbones in an imploring sweep. 

“I do, don’t be dense, of course I do, I just won’t be able to stop you if we keep it up, and, er, I haven't _showered_ since, well...since you left,” she confesses, cheeks colouring. 

Harriet dips down to lick the heat of her blush, and normally that would gross Draco out, but it’s Harriet, so it just feels good, intimate, _filthy_. “I don’t care,” she whispers into Draco’s skin. 

“Yes, you do, you just don’t know you do yet because you’re a girl-sex virgin,” Draco tells her, brushing her hand up Harriet’s heaving ribcage, suddenly grinning because it’s hitting her that she's _here_ , she’s not bolting out the door yelling at her, she’s begging to _touch_ her. It’s mad. “Or an every-sex virgin, I don't know what’s happened in your prudish fantasy-heroine’s life so far.” 

“I’m _not_ , do I need to remind you? About the other night?” Harriet asks, grinding down onto Draco’s thigh before gasping and lifting back up again, trembling, cheeks hot like she embarrassed herself with how lewd and easy she is for her. Draco almost forgets the shower entirely, thinking about flipping Harriet onto her back and fumbling under the waistband of her horrific muggle jeans to see how wet she is just from _this_ , thinking about getting down on her knees for her and testing how loud she is when her clit’s sucked, but she stops herself, closes her eyes, and steadies her breath. 

“We could use the tubs in the prefect’s bathroom...I still have the password,” she suggests, tilting her chin up and kissing Harriet’s jaw, the soft skin just above her throat. “I’m assuming you’re staying longer than it would take for a quick shag?” she asks hopefully, thumbing a damp black curl behind Harriet’s ear, watching her face soften. 

“I’m staying for two days. Promised Molly I’d spend Christmas day at The Burrow, but told her I needed to sort something out at Hogwarts, so...we have time, I suppose,” she explains, and Draco’s throat tightens with dual relief and disappointment. Two days isn't long enough when you’re in love and she’s right on top of you and smells like snow and tears and spice, but it’s so much better than nothing. “I mean, if you’ll have me.” 

“I will,” Draco vows with certainty, thumbing roughly over the soft, chapped shape of her lips. “First, in the prefect’s loo.” 

“Alright, then...you _do_ sort of smell,” she giggles, bending down and kissing Draco hard, and normally she’d tell her to piss off for that, but it’s not worth pulling away from the slick heat of her mouth.

—-

They slip down into the corridor that opens into the prefect’s bathroom, tip-toeing, shooting nervous glances over their shoulders even though there’s no one to catch them. “How the hell did you even get _into_ the Slytherin dormitories?” Draco asks once it occurs to her that Harriet somehow figured out a way to do it _just_ so she could bang on Draco’s door. After back-to-back _train trips._ It all makes Draco’s stomach twist in spite of herself, and she forces a frown so as not to bely the mess of butterflies fluttering inside her.

“Right, erm, it’s sort of embarrassing,” Harriet whispers, leading the way even though she doesn’t know where she’s going. She’s that sort of girl, naturally forging paths, charismatic and confident even though Draco is well aware that she never knows what the fuck she’s actually doing. It’s charming, and normally it would make Draco angry, but she gets to _kiss_ her, at least theoretically, so instead it makes her weirdly proud. “When I got to Hogwarts, I found the first Slytherin I could and asked him to take me. I didn't even have to pull my wand, I think he was just scared that I’d deck him or something, so he took me down to the dungeons. He wasn't even a first year, like, third or fourth, maybe...but he was terrified.” 

“My god, what a pathetic excuse for a Slytherin,” Draco groans, making a face. “So much for house pride. I can’t believe you threatened an underclassman for access to my dormitory…how romantic, Potter,” she jokes, trying to say it lightly and half-succeeding because they _are_ whispering. Still, Harriet shoots her a look, eyes dark, like, _yes,_ she knows it’s romantic, was going for the whole stupid grand gesture thing that Draco has always pretended to hate for posterity's sake, even if she secretly longed for it. 

Once they’re inside the bathroom, Draco kicks on all the taps and strips down easily, aware that Potter’s looking at her and trying to appear as if she doesn't care, that Harriet’s gaze doesn't make Draco feel hot and squirmy and powerful all at once. She _knows_ she’s at least traditionally beautiful, in fact, she’s _exploited_ the differences between her refined features and Harriet’s boyish, slouchy frame to ridicule her for years. She thinks about that now as she tests the temperature with her toe and slides into the bubbly water, beckoning for Potter, who’s still fully clothed and standing there with her head cocked, her lips pursed. 

“C’mon now...if you’re worried about me ogling you while you take your clothes off, I’ll look away,” she taunts lightly. When Harriet rolls her eyes, she rolls her own back at her and adds, “Or if you're _actually_ dense enough to think that every time I mocked your looks it was for any _other_ reason than me resenting how badly I wanted to _shag_ you, I can assure you, it should be the last of your worries.” 

Potter flushes, jaw clenching into a lovely, furious line before she releases it and turns her back to Draco, making a defiant, childish show out of rolling her jeans down her hips and shucking her jumper. Draco’s breath catches at the sight of her thighs, her calves, and she has to look away as she takes her knickers off because spying when she's done so much to contribute to any body insecurity Harriet has seems horribly unfair. _You're the most beautiful thing, want to kiss every inch of you,_ she imagines saying, but it's too raw, too true, so she keeps it inside, trapped in her throat as Harriet lowers herself into the water, thighs drawn together to conceal the thatch of dark hair between them, hands cupping her perfect little tits. Draco wants to cry; her skin is golden brown and dusky around her knees and elbows and every crease, and she wants _so badly_ to touch her, to look closely without her gaze feeling invasive or judgmental. 

There are so many things her self-sabotaging past self ruined for her. “I have a whole complex about my nipples, thanks to you,” Potter quips, which doesn't make her feel any better. She looks up, sweeping her hair off her neck and tying it into a loose bun. “There are so many ways you’ve fucked me up, but also, like…shaped me. S’hard to even remember and keep track of it all...what came from you, what didn’t,” she muses, and her voice is gentle and thoughtful enough that Draco realizes she's not trying to hurt or insult her, even though she feels hurt and insulted all the same. 

“I’m sorry for that...for all of it,” Draco mumbles, flicking her hair out of her eyes. 

“It’s fine now, weirdly enough,” Potter replies, flattening her palms over the surface of the water and pushing bubbles away as they collect against her skin.

“Show us your nipples, then,” Draco says gently, swimming closer but not close enough to touch, shaking water from her hair as she settles a foot away or so from Harriet. “C’mon, Potter, isn't this some sort of muggle therapy technique? Facing your fears or whatever?” she prods, and she's being snarky at the same time her mouth is dry with want, her heart heavy with regret. So many warring feelings, tearing her apart. 

Harriet makes a face. “You won't call me flat-chested and prepubescent? Or make a dig at my areola-to-nipple-point ratio? I have very little evidence to suggest that you won't actually laugh at me,” she counters, squeezing her hands together so the modest swells of flesh meet and form a false cleavage line that Draco wants desperately to kiss. 

“No evidence? Not from all the ways I've touched you, the multiple times I've confessed my _love_ like an absolute idiot, the fact that I spent forty-eight hours crying over—” Draco’s voice dries up in her throat as Harriet drops her hands, letting them sink back down into the foamy water on either side of her. Her nipples are very dark and very puffy and very suckable, and, _yes,_ she remembers plenty of terrible comments that she's made throughout the years about such things, but in this moment, all she can do is stare. 

“I guess I should have wondered why you were so fixated on my tits in the first place,” Harriet deadpans, swimming closer and crossing the distance between them before climbing into Draco’s lap, straddling her. Draco’s hands automatically fly to her hips to steady her, but then she gets greedy, touching smooth, wet, brown skin in hungry strokes, from her underarms to her hips. “You’re rather obvious now that I know what to look for.” 

And then they’re kissing, and those swollen dark nipples are brushing up against Draco’s rosy pink ones in the water, and it’s _so_ sensitive, so dirty, that she keens messily into Potter’s lips. Harriet tentatively affixes her hands to Draco’s tits, squeezing experimentally like a curious twelve-year-old boy in this way that makes Draco even more mortifyingly endeared. “Enjoying what a proper set feels like?” she jokes, and Harriet bites her throat, shuts her up. 

“I always wished for tits like yours, if I’m honest,” Potter giggles, shifting her weight in Draco’s lap deliciously, thumbing over her nipples and making them draw tight. “You were the sort of pretty girl I never was.” 

“You’ve always been pretty...every boy at Hogwarts wanted to date you,” she tells her, and Harriet scoffs in response. 

“Because of who I _was,_ not how I looked. Boys liking you does _not_ mean you’re pretty…I think you told me that, once or twice,” she reminds her, making Draco frown. 

“M’sorry I made you feel like that. You’re perfect to me,” she admits; it’s easier this way, when they’re close, their bodies are pressed flush, she can feel the frantic thud of Potter’s heart only a fistful of flesh away. “I was awful, I was—”

Harriet doesn't let her say anything more, just cups her flushed, sweat-damp face and kisses her deeply, messy and with tongue until they’re snogging up against the side of the prefect’s tub so hard that Draco’s back is aching from the dig of marble. Potter is feeling her all over, her ribs and her back and the swells of her hips, even as far down as her thighs, where her own are splayed wide enough that Draco can feel the thrilling scrub of her pubic hair against her own lower abdomen, not exactly where she wants it but close enough to make her stomach plummet. Harriet’s skin is smooth and hot, lightly furred on her lower back and upper thighs where she clearly doesn’t bother to shave, and Draco loves it, wants to bite her there, wants to know the map of her body like she knows the map of her own, every scar, every mark. “Aren’t you supposed to be getting clean so we can do this in your bed?” Potter asks, tugging at Draco’s hair to drag herself closer, Draco’s fingers digging hungrily into her thighs as she holds onto her, kisses her, drinks her in because this will never be enough, even if she _gets_ it every day of her life from here until the end.

“Yeah,” Draco whines, fingers creeping slowly to the center of her, stomach in knots. “You make it very difficult to get things done, Potter.” 

Harriet kisses her hard before she lets go and drifts away, mouth parted and obscene in how swollen it is. Draco remains spread out up against the side, panting, chest heaving. “Wash up,” Harriet tells her, standing so that white soapy rivulets course down her shiny dark skin as she hops up onto the edge. “M’gonna pass out if we keep it up...keep forgetting to breathe, and m’dizzy, it’s so hot.” 

Draco nods, trying to get herself together as she pushes on a soap tap and collects the thick silver foam on her hands. Rubbing it in under her arms, she keeps glancing sidelong at Potter, naked and slick where she’s perched on the edge of the tub. “So,” she says conversationally, as if she’s not lurching as she soaps between her legs where she's embarrassingly swollen and slick and sensitive from snogging. “Weasley sent you back…does that mean he doesn't hate me anymore?” 

Harriet shrugs. “Oh, no, he hates you still...possibly even more than before. But he wants to see me happy more than he wants to see you suffer, so if you’re the thing I want, he’s gonna make sure I board a train back to deal with it, I guess. It's not my _friends_ who want me to sacrifice my happiness for their own, it’s _me_ who compulsively _does_ it.” 

Draco frowns, dipping back into the bath to rinse herself off. “You sure he’s not in love with you?” she asks, only fifteen percent joking. In all honesty, she's always _wondered_ about Weasley and Potter; their parasitic closeness and weird loyalty was one of the first strikes against Draco and her failed attempts at befriending Potter first year. 

Harriet makes a disgusted face. “ _Ron?!_ God, no, I’m like his sister, ew. Plus, he and Hermione are seriously in love.” 

“Charming,” Draco drawls, forcing a smile without forcing herself to make it look less than forced. “Well, regardless, m’glad he made you rethink your decision to storm out of my room yelling about how your friends will never accept me as your girlfriend. Not that we’re girlfriends,” she adds, tacking the last bit on perhaps a tad more hastily than she would like, but still, the entire phrase comes out smooth and even, as if her whole future isn't hung up on Potter’s response. 

“Whatever we are,” Potter says, kicking at the water, eyes fixed on her own toes as she trails them through the banks of bubbles that have collected in the corners of the tub. “I’m glad I’m here, too.” 

It’s a small triumph, but Draco’s heart clenches all the same. 

—-

Back in her dormitory, they end up lying on her bed facing each other, sharing nervous, shallow breaths. Harriet is compulsively petting Draco’s hair, winding her fingers through the wet, clumped strands of it, clearly desperate for something to to fiddle with. Draco doesn't mind. It feels so good just to be _touched,_ to be looked at, Harriet’s gaze intense and green and troubled, insanely bright without the barrier of her glasses dulling the color. “Erm, I don't really know what I’m doing,” she whispers, eyes darting to Draco’s lips before they sweep up to regard her point-blank again. 

Draco smiles smugly, even though she’s doesn’t really know what _she’s_ doing, either. She's at least fooled around before, with both boys and girls, but it was always meaningless and alcohol-fueled. Nothing like this, Potter so close to her, exhalations shallow and nervous and delicious as they huff out over her lips, their hearts thudding in nervous tandem. “What is it, exactly, that you want to do, Potter?” she asks, trailing her fingers down her neck, her collarbone, sweeping the stretched-out neck of her shirt.. “I don't want…well. I’ll just meet you wherever you’re at. I can take it slow if you need me to.” 

“I want to make you come,” Potter confesses, eyes fluttering closed. “Want to feel you...feeling good.” 

Draco has to bite back an involuntary sound at that, shifting closer so that their torsos brush up against each other, skin hot and damp and pink from the bath. “Fuck, alright, noted. Any…preferences about how you'd like to do that?” she asks, thinking about guiding Harriet’s hands between her thighs, showing her where to rub, how much pressure, coating her slender dark fingers in shiny slick. 

But Potter shocks her by burying her face in Draco’s shoulder for a moment before biting down, sucking at the sting, and admitting, “With my mouth. If that’s not...if you’d like it.” 

Draco’s eyes are, quite suddenly, stinging with overwhelmed tears. It seems like such a vulnerable, intimate, subservient thing to do to someone, something _she_ would only do if she was really in love, so to hear Harriet offer it up with such dirty, raw courage makes her stomach twist up in longing. She shakes her head, awed, before saying, “I would...so _much_. God, your mouth, it’s the prettiest fucking thing, Potter, think about it all the time.” 

“Really?” Harriet asks, and Draco snorts. 

“Yes, and I can’t manage sarcasm at a time like this, so you can trust everything I’m saying is dreadfully honest.” 

“Just show me what to do, then,” Potter demands, licking her lips, making them glisten. She’s already up on her hands and knees, shifting down the bed so that her head is level with Draco’s stomach, trailing her fingers in an idle, mindless pattern, transfixed. “Should you stand and I kneel? Or—”

“ _Merlin,_ it’s like you know exactly what to say to drive me mad,” Draco whines, clenching her thighs together before rolling onto her back. Or maybe it’s like all of her desires were built around Harriet Potter, and nothing has changed in seven years. But she doesn’t admit that. “I’ll lie on my back, you get between my legs, I suppose...I won’t be able to stay standing, not this time.” 

“Okay,” Harriet murmurs, adjusting herself, rolling onto her front and waiting patiently while Draco unties her pajama bottoms and shimmies out of them, embarrassed and nervous but pretending that she’s not because _someone_ has to be less than terrified right now. She settles back down, thighs parted to accommodate Harriet’s narrow shoulders, hand cupped over her own mound, which already feels hot and throbbing with how badly she wants Harriet’s tongue. 

“And you’re sure this is how you want to do it?” Draco asks doubtfully, pushing the tip of her finger past her inner lips where she’s still slippery from how much _kissing_ there’s been, from getting to cup and squeeze Harriet’s tits in the bath. “I won’t be offended if you back out.” 

“I know I want to,” Potter assures her, smoothing her palms up the outside of her thighs. “It’s actually…well. At the risk of sounding horribly creepy, this is something I’ve thought about doing to you a lot? I had fantasies, you see, when we were teenagers…mostly about beating the shit out of you or cursing you or something.” 

“Fair,” Draco admits, toying with herself a bit now, astounded that she has Harriet here between her legs, repeatedly licking her lips, telling her about the _fantasies_ she had years ago. It’s shocking; Draco _never_ thought the complexity of her obsession could be mirrored, so she listens carefully, subtly rubbing up her slit. 

“But they were also, like, I dunno...elaborate. I’d imagine things that you’d do to me or ways that you’d manipulate me to get myself angry enough to dream of throttling you…sounds so unhealthy now or just odd, like, revenge fantasies, I guess? _Anyway,_ sometimes I’d think about you...forcing me to do things to you, like, pulling your wand on me and ordering me to get on my knees and lick you—”

 _“Harriet Potter!”_ Draco squawks, cheeks colouring and cunt positively _pulsing_ under the pressure of her fingers. “I’m scandalized! All this time I thought _I_ was the one who was weird about you but _in reality_ the Great Wholesome Potter was a pervert!” 

“You sound delighted,” Harriet tells her, eyes so bright, cheeks so flushed, like she's about to catch fire and incinerate them both to ash right here on Draco’s dirty duvet. 

“You realize that it’s _not_ _normal_ to fantasize about _eating your_ _enemies out,_ even if the end goal is to punish them for it or whatever sick and twisted scenarios you worked out in your little pervert brain,” she teases, _beside_ herself with glee, because it _wasn’t_ just her, all this time, Harriet Potter and her _thick skull_ wanted her back, even if she didn't realize it. 

“I understand that _now,”_ Potter whines, rubbing her burning cheek against Draco’s pale thigh. “But my _point_ is that you don’t have to worry about me, like…not knowing what m’getting into.” 

“I can see that,” Draco hisses, parting her legs wider and shifting her hand, so that her fingers are spreading her lips apart, showing Harriet what’s inside, how dewy-wet and messy she is from all of this, how hard her clit is. “This what you wanted, all these years? Just to suck my cunt?” 

“Nnngh,” is all Harriet can get out, shifting closer on her stomach, hands coming to rest on Draco’s heaving stomach to steady herself. “Yes, _please,”_ she breathes in an awed hush, and Draco can hardly believe it, how much she _has_ her, how weak and desperate she is, just from seeing her split open like this. 

“Right here,” Draco murmurs, pushing her index finger into herself to coat it and bringing the slippery mess up to her clit, which she rubs, slicks up. “Bring your pretty mouth right here and kiss it for me.” 

Harriet makes another wrecked, wordless sound before pitching forward and pressing her lips right into Draco’s center. 

It’s too much, almost, how intense and wet and wonderful it feels. The best thing, too good for someone like Draco, but still it’s happening, Harriet’s unrelenting tongue lapping at her, swirling, sucking hungrily, licking through all her folds as she moans into her, nose and cheeks already shiny with spit and slick. It’s clear that Potter doesn’t _need_ guidance, not because she’s experienced or even a natural, but because she _wants it so badly,_ eats like she’s been imagining it for years, like she’s been starved for a millennium. Her enthusiasm is _moving,_ thumbs digging into Draco’s thighs so deeply that she feels like she might bruise, white skin dimpled under the pressure. Draco can hardly keep track of it, was planning to chide and tease and praise Potter through this, but she can’t do anything other than arch her spine and allow her head to fall back and dissolve into messy, frantic gasps as she bucks against the maddening heat of Potter’s mouth over and over again until she comes. 

Harriet either doesn't notice or doesn’t think it’s a good reason to stop because she keeps whimpering and nuzzling and sucking at Draco’s clit until Draco yelps and kicks away, eventually collapsing into a somewhat delirious gale of wheezy laughter. “Potter,” she chokes out, trying to breathe. “This is a roundabout way of killing me if that’s what you’re trying to do.” 

“I’ll take that as you enjoying yourself very much,” Harriet says, sounding smug, hair everywhere as she kisses her way up Draco’s thigh, to her hip, eyes shot and bright and stunned looking. “You’re so pink inside,” she murmurs then, quietly. “I could do that forever, didn’t want to stop.” 

“Exactly, a very creative murder attempt,” she jokes, not sure if she’s making sense, still trying to catch her breath and twitching at every touch. “You rather enjoyed yourself, too.” 

“Yes,” Potter sighes, reaching into her knickers and feeling her cunt, fingers coming back shiny. 

“Give me that,” Draco orders, and Potter reaches out for her hips, but, _no,_ that’s not enough, so Draco makes an impatient noise and clarifies, “ _No,_ come sit on my face, let me—”

Harriet keens as she walks up the bed on her knees, and Draco, again, doesn’t bother getting her out of her knickers before pulling the crotch aside and licking up into the dark, perfect heat of her. Harriet freezes and trembles, bracing her hands on the wall for steadiness, and with an arm wrapped around each of her narrow, quaking thighs, Draco drowns herself. It doesn't take long—she’s eager and Potter is sensitive and grinding pointedly into her mouth—but still, when she locks up and shivers and starts to come, it makes Draco feel like she’s witnessing a miracle, a natural disaster. Her flavour becomes sharper and more metallic, her thigh muscles shudder as she makes the most ruined, devastating sounds, and she, too, is pink inside, and Draco, too, could do this forever. 

—-

They spend the rest of the day eating, shagging, and lying semi-naked in bed talking about the war more openly than Draco has ever dared to do in the past. She might even _cry_ a bit at some point, but if she does, that’s between her, Potter, and her dormitory walls. 

It’s oddly blissful, this sort of vulnerability. Stretched out shirtless on her bed while Harriet strokes up and down her stomach idly, the two of them trading horror stories, memories, losses. It’s so wonderfully honest and raw and comforting that Draco doesn’t even realize night is coming, so when it does, the darkness surprises her, makes her peer out the window with her hair mussed and wonder if a storm is coming. “Well,” she says when she realizes it’s only dusk coming for her, “time flies when you’re opening old wounds.” 

“Or healing them,” Harriet yawns. “I can’t believe I have to get on a train again tomorrow night. I just want…just wanna sleep with you. A few times.” 

Draco looks at her, throat thick. “It’s a shame you have to leave.” 

Harriet shrugs, presses her lips together, and picks at a stray thread coming from Draco’s pillow. She’s naked save for her knickers, which are stretched out and threadbare at best, dark wisps of hair escaping the gaps in such a manner that Draco finds it difficult not to smooth her fingers over them every few seconds. “Or I could stay,” Potter offers, and Draco stops, hand suspended in mid-air. 

“Oh?” she asks, trying to silence the rising bubble of hope in her chest. 

“I mean, I shouldn’t. And not all of me even wants to, but I _could,”_ Harriet explains. “A big part of me does, actually.” 

“A big part of me wants you to as well,” Draco admits, voice small. “You’d miss all your gifts, though...I had them sent to the Weasleys.” 

“All of my… _Malfoy._ You sent gifts? As in _more than one_? _”_

 _“Goodness_ , don't sound so shocked, Potter, of course I did...plenty, even. I was trying to _woo_ you, remember?” Draco tells her, making a face, remembering everything that will be arriving at The Burrow in two days’ time. Dress robes with magical embroidery woven in, rare potion ingredients in a set of die-cut glass bottles, a locket that shows the wearer what she truly wants. (Draco perhaps had selfish motivations regarding the aforementioned locket, hoping that her own reflection might appear in it, but that was beside the point.)

“But what are the Weasleys going to think when a bunch of expensive, pretentious gifts show up from _you_ but _only_ for me? Won't it look, I don’t know...a bit obvious?” Harriet sputters, and Draco is a bit offended, brows raising. 

“Well, _yes,_ that would be somewhat obtuse and also cruel, which is why I got gifts for _all_ the Weasley clan, Granger, too. I had to sort of _hide_ my affections among the masses, didn’t I? It’s not like I made arrangements for these _after_ you kissed me.” 

Potter is staring at her, eyes wide and green, mouth parted in an affronted gasp that Draco wants badly to tilt forward and swallow. Harriet is so _cute_ when she’s shocked like this, everything plastered right on her face for anyone to read. “You _bought the Weasleys Christmas gifts?_ In hopes of seducing me?” she asks, seeming dually impressed and horrified. 

Draco blushes, reaching out and winding one of Potter’s curls around her finger in what she hopes is a coy and charming manner. It sounds less romantic and more desperate and pathetic when it’s laid out like this, and Harriet’s reaction is making her wonder if she overstepped boundaries or did the wrong thing. It’s so _hard_ to know the proper thing to do with money around people who have none, how to assist without flaunting or insulting. So, she tells the truth. “That was one of many ulterior motives, I suppose. I _did_ want to get in your good graces and buy you pretty things…but I also want...I don't know. I inherited a lot from families of dead Death Eaters, and it feels awful, really, to have that money. Sending it to Hogwarts for repairs doesn’t feel that different from sending it to the Weasleys. Like you said, there’s need. The war fucked over a lot of families and—”

Potter kisses her, lips soft, fingers gentle as they brush down her cheek. It’s a soft, sweet sort of kiss, the kind that Draco still feels she doesn't entirely deserve, as if the universe is making a mistake every time it allows her something like this. Still, she soaks it up, holding onto Potter as she pulls back a bit, eyes shining. “You’re so _turned on_ by charity,” Draco marvels. 

“You’re not a fraction as hard and cold and horrible as you led me to believe all those years,” Harriet tells her, voice low and hot and scraping, hooking Draco low in her gut. 

“Perhaps,” she concedes, and she’s ready to be rolled onto her back and snogged when Harriet kisses her and stands up to dash to her desk. “Where are you going?!” 

“To write a letter to Molly Weasley,” she declares, rudely rifling through Draco’s drawers for a quill and parchment. It would be unforgivable, but she's mostly naked, which means that Draco will most likely forgive her anything. “Asking very nicely if I can bring my girlfriend to Christmas.” 

And if Draco cries, that’s between her, Potter, and her dormitory walls.

—-

 

 

 

 


End file.
